


Purple Marks and Bleeding Hearts

by TeaParade



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drama, Galra!Keith, Humor, Little bit of angst, M/M, Psychological Torture, Slow Burn, This little motley family kills me, Torture, ahh yes and who could forget our good friend sexual tension, but it might turn into a lot, sniper!lance, some language, space warfare so pretty fun stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:51:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 74,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7722379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaParade/pseuds/TeaParade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark #223-code-violet, Lance's newest job, is not what the sniper signed up for when he joined team Voltron, a specialist group designed to take out the universe's worst of the worst. This mark shouldn't be any different from the other Galra, but he is. And Lance is having a very hard time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Marked Territory

**Author's Note:**

> *Sighs* 
> 
> I did it again. I gave myself yet another project to work on, but... I really love this concept. This fic was originally inspired by an artwork on tumblr by kit-replica, who graciously let me use inspiration from that piece to write this (the art can be found here: kit-replica.tumblr.com/post/148569737366/klance-week-2016-day-12-redblue-lovehate ) I might continue this fic since I think it's got a ton of potential, and it's so much fun! Thanks for reading!

“Your mark is right below, forty-five degrees and no movement.”

“Target sighted," Lance murmured, "Easy peasy.”

“Excellent work. But you haven’t even aimed yet.”

“Right.”

 

As it turned out, it wasn't exactly  as “easy peasy” as he’d anticipated.

Five minutes later, the mark was still alive and well, and team Voltron’s comms-slash-tech specialist was reaching her last nerve.

“ _Lance_ , take the damn shot already!”

Pidge’s voice came out impatient over the comms unit wired into Lance’s earpiece, but Lance was too busy staring through the scope, seeing the world in tinted red as his eyes focused on the Galra soldier he was _supposed_ to be wasting right about now.

Unfortunately for Lance, the soldier (not just any soldier; this guy was Galran _royalty_ ) was pretty damn easy on the eyes— even if the big, purple ears threw him off a bit. The Galran prince liked to keep his royal identity low-key, but with Lance's connections, he'd found out the man's lineage on his father's side, no problem- although the mother's lineage appeared to have been either lost or destroyed. Maybe this Galra didn't care much for bloodlines, but his cohorts certainly did, because he was given a _lot_ more respect and attention than Lance thought the guy probably deserved. What an arrogant prick.

Well, Lance assumed he was.

Back in the main chambers during initial recon, the Galra making up the reserved crowd of fifty or more nearly filled the room, and although they weren't rowdy or anything close to party-ready, the atmosphere was heavy with their intensity. It was, as Shiro had put it, the equivalent of a fancy gala for Galra soldiers who never took a day off.

But the mark hadn’t been there.

No, Lance’s little mister 223 was hanging around one of the main hangars, talking battle strategy with a fellow pilot next to a smaller, docked aircraft.

 _This_ soldier definitely wasn’t like the others, but he seemed to be accepted enough within the ranks to have a friendly chat with another Galra, who was decked out in full military gear.

The mark also wore full gear, sans helmet, which he cradled beneath his left arm. He continued to chatter on with the other soldier and appeared oblivious to the galactic sniper rifle- Lance’s precious Bayard- currently trained at his head.

But the rifle’s angle was slipping, all thanks to Lance and his sudden flare of… oh, goddamn it. Great, this was getting too uncomfortable, considering the circumstances. He couldn’t take his eyes off the man, and his thoughts were anywhere but completing this task when he was busy looking at those long eyelashes, those soft lips, that perfectly soft-yet-strong jawline and—shit, was he hard?

This was definitely not the plan.

“Pidge!” Lance hissed over the comms, despairing, “is this why you wouldn’t show me a freaking picture of the guy before sending me out here?” He was so in for it now.

A long-suffering sigh was the only response he got.

Oh, great, so Pidge had known from the beginning that the guy was a dang Galra underwear model with a mullet—a mullet that he somehow, _somehow,_ managed to make look ridiculously good, and not only had Pidge _not_ told him, but she also hadn’t at _least_ tried to find a backup sniper – because Lance suddenly wasn’t sure if he could do this.

For the first time in his life, he actually wasn’t sure if he could carry out the job.

He always carried out the job. He couldn’t let his team down now…

 

Lance McClain was the self-proclaimed, highly lauded sniper (and lady’s man extraordinaire) of team Voltron, a small but elite group that worked in the business of tracking down the universe’s most-wanted enemies – warlords, murderers, slave-traders, assassins, you name it – and taking them out _._

Each member of the team of specialists, christened ‘the Paladins’ by their Head of Operations, had their own niche, and Lance’s was marksmanship; in other words, if someone was wanted dead and _Lance_ was offered the job, then the mark was as good as dead before he’d even pulled the trigger.

 

Except this one.

This mark was different. Lance could feel it in his gut.

Not just different in appearance (which he _was_. Really, did the guy _really_ think people believed he was full Galra?), but in the way he held himself. The way his expression, even with the bright yellow eyes, was softer than the others, more relaxed, less militant. He was casual in a way that the Galra were not trained to be, and if Lance didn’t know any better, he would say that this soldier did not belong, period.

But then again, mark #223-code-violet was on the list of top one hundred most-wanted Galra fighters in the Empire.

Lance didn’t even know the guy’s name, but he did know his age, weight, height, fighting background, and he knew that the man had only just received a promotion to the status of Master Sergeant. And at such a young age, too. By earth years, the man was only nineteen.

Still a teenager. It must be terrifying.

Then again, Lance could empathize. He was in the same position, more or less.

Naturally, Lance couldn’t help but feel suspicious from the get-go – Pidge and Shiro had both said the same thing as well. The sooner this Galra bugger was taken out, the better - that was what Allura had said. As Head of Operations, no one argued with her very often. The need to take out the Galra was already kind of a moot point. Coran, Allura’s personal assistant and overseer of technical affairs over at Voltron’s headquarters, wholeheartedly agreed.

It was either snipe this purple piece of scum, or Lance would have his status as one of the universe’s top snipers dragged through the proverbial mud. It had taken Lance years to work up his reputation,  _years,_ ever since he was sixteen and privately recruited, and it would be a nasty blow to his entire team if that was ever taken away.

Lance took a deep breath, and steadied his hand, refocusing as he took aim again.

 

The guy was just so… well, his _type?_

Not that Lance had, well— a type, but he knew from one look at the mark that if he _did_ have a type, this guy would probably be it. Fuzzy purple ears and all. Did that make him weird? That sounded weird. But it was true, and it could be weirder, couldn't it?

He swallowed. With a hand that was only a fraction less steady than his usual, statue-like stillness, Lance flicked off the safety of his galaxy-issued Bayard. Mark #223 was in perfect position, he had a clear shot. The scope didn’t lie. Lance was beginning to wish it did.

Another deep breath.

“ _Lance,”_ Pidge growled over the comms, “dude, we love you and all, but if you fail this mission I am personally going to _rip you a new one.”_ Oh, great, and now his comms specialist was pissed at him. If he screwed this up, Pidge would definitely hold true to her word. That was, if Allura didn’t get to him first – quiznak, the woman would flay him alive. With a spoon. A dull spoon. “What are you waiting for?” Lance flinched at the raise in volume over his earpiece. “Stop thinking with your dick and start thinking with your head!”

“ _Har har_ ,” Lance snapped back quietly over the receiver. “Give me a minute.”

“Lance, you’ve already had five. I know your aim isn’t _that_ bad. Pull the trigger, Romeo.”

 

Just before Lance could make a jab at Pidge’s own marksman abilities, the mark turned his head, only by a few inches. Still, it was enough.

Oh stars and suns, he was looking up.

He was looking at _Lance._

Lance’s breath caught in his throat – the Galra man with the mullet had definitely seen him. But the switch in focus had only been for a tick, because a second later the man turned back to face his buddy— picking up from where he left off in the conversation, probably— and the other suited soldier seemed none the wiser.

“I-I…” Lance stuttered, nearly forgetting what he was going to say.

“Hey man, you okay?” Pidge sounded a tiny bit gentler over his earpiece now. A _little_ bit. “What’s going on in there? Give me a visual, did the mark walk away?”

“N-no,” Lance gave the smallest cough, not wanting to attract attention to himself from up on the empty platform.

His position was expertly chosen, if he did say so himself. At least a good twenty feet off the ground, and dark enough without the lights that he was hidden in plain sight. If anyone looked up, they wouldn’t seem him unless they knew what to look for.

Those yellow eyes had spotted him, he was sure of it. He said as much over the comms.

Pidge swore.

“Either take him out _now_ , or haul ass out of there. We can figure out another way to get to him, but for the love peanut butter make a freaking decision. It’s either that, or I’m sending in Shiro to extract you.”

Oh, just what he needed. Their team leader to come in and pick him up like a parent picking up their kid from the principal’s office. This was going to get _so_ embarrassing for all of them if he didn’t make up his mind.

An excuse. What Lance needed was a good excuse.

After all, this mark was entirely different from the others, right? Anyone with eyes could see that. #223’s records were vague, aside from physical descriptions and training experience, and he was allegedly involved in rounding up Empire prisoners of war and sending them into dogfights for entertainment – by all accounts, these were just rumours, nothing more.

Okay, so maybe this Galra sergeant-whatever was apparently working in a field that would technically qualify as illegal by most galaxy’s standards, and was sanctioned solely by the Galra Empire. With that Empire quickly growing, these activities might soon be completely legal in a _much_ broader sense.

It was either cut them at the quick, or let these slave-trading, dogfighting sadists spread like a nasty, violent plague.

This mark didn’t look the type, he just didn’t.

Lance didn’t know why he was so sure, but it was either that, or kill this man without any solid evidence. Perhaps this soldier would be seen not as a warning from Voltron, but as a martyr, and someone to be inspired by when conquering the rest of the known universe. Starting with the human Earthlings.

“I’m calling it,” Lance groaned into his mouthpiece. “I don’t feel right about this.”

“…That’s your final decision?” Pidge hedged.

“We have no solid evidence, other than a single witness’s account and a lot of Intergalactic war propaganda. We’ll have to figure this out at a better time. I’m coming out, be ready for me.” For once, his tone didn’t sound annoyingly flirtatious, which he knew ticked his comms specialist off to a T.

“Copy.”

Pidge’s voice cut out. Lance, heaving a heavy sigh, took one last, fleeting glance at the Galra soldier with the oddly appealing black mullet and ridiculous ears that made him fit in with the rest, if only just.

Then he slowly got up from his crouch, adjusted his Bayard under his arm, and turned to leave through the clearance hall meant for storage, the same way he’d snuck in.

Only, this time he wasn’t alone.

 

“Hello, quiet little thing,” the guard said in smooth English, wearing no helmet but not needing one as the rest of his military-suited self was imposing enough, towering eight feet above the ground and dwarfing Lance in comparison. A Galra grunt with more muscle than brains, from the looks of him. 

Lance, trained for situations like these, backed up just a few inches and said nothing. His finger twitched over the trigger of his Bayard, but he was in no position to aim the thing. These Galra soldiers were much trickier to shoot at when they were actually _aware_ of their targeter.

“Uh…” he cleared his throat, “hey man, how goes it?” No, no no, it was all going south, he hadn’t even thought of a contingency plan for this one. “Nice weather up here. In um… space.”

Lance was out of his depth, and with Pidge silent over the comms, he was pretty much on his own. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say next that wouldn’t get him killed in an instant.

Well… quiznak.


	2. Mission Failed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to some really positive (holy crap, like, really positive???) feedback, it looks like this fic is going to continue! Without further ado, the second chapter.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

The fact that he was still alive was more surprising than anything.

 

Lance figured it had something to do with the royally gorgeous, mullet-haired asshole - not to mention his, uh,  _mark,_ up until about ten seconds ago.

All he was aware of next was someone from below (the mark, he guessed, since voice sounded a little younger than any of the Galra around) shouting, “Wait!” before the towering soldier in front of Lance slowly, albeit very reluctantly, lowered his own plasma gun—forget laser tag, that weapon was, in Lance’s own words, _dope as hell_. And scary as shit.

It would be even better if _he_  was the one holding the ginormous weapon instead of the Galra soldier who currently wanted to blast him to kingdom come- but, for reasons unknown, was not doing that.

In less than a tick, his Bayard was snatched from his hands and two more soldiers were flanking him on either side, hooking armored arms under his armpits and dragging him around to face the hangar below.

A strong hand came from behind and forced his head downward, to better face the soldiers on the lower level—more specifically, to look at the very person Lance had hoped he would never have to face personally. Just his luck, right?

Especially after he’d been assigned to, well, kill the guy. Which Lance hadn’t actually planned on doing, but that was beside the point.

“What shall we do with the intruder, Master Sergeant?” the Galra, the one with the painful grasp on the back of Lance’s head, asked the younger of the soldiers down below.

The Galra prince and supposed "Master Sergeant" stared back up at Lance, yellow eyes wide and… what was his expression? Unsure? Lance had never seen any of the Galra look anything less than one hundred percent certain of their decisions, ever. And yet, this one was slowly but surely proving himself to be far more different than any Galra Lance had ever met.

After just a moment’s hesitation, Lance heard the prince clear his throat, before responding in a reserved voice,

“Sedate him. And take him down to a holding cell. I'll deal with him there.”

A quick “ _Vrepit sa,”_ and then the tallest guards flanking Lance manhandled him away from the balcony, before Lance felt a dull pinch in his neck, and then, nothing.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

He woke up with a crick in his neck, a dry mouth, and no memory of anything after getting his neck shot full of tranquilizer serum.

 

All while that stupid prick of a target stared up at him with those curious eyes, saying nothing more and not moving an inch as Lance lost consciousness. His eyes, yellow and bright, didn't leave Lance’s before he finally gave in to the effects of the serum. Or maybe it was just Lance's drugged up imagination talking.

 

Groaning, he pushed himself up from the floor on shaky arms and took in his surroundings.

He remembered being tossed, possibly. Yeah, he’d been tossed into a room. He supposed he was in that same room right now, but things were a little foggy.

His eyes seemed to be adjusting easily enough. He’d been out cold, right? He didn't remember waking up. And he didn’t know how long he'd been out, either. Whatever was in that serum, these guys clearly meant business (Did they ever _not? )_

Stifling another groan of pain as a flare of something strong overtook him, spiking up his arm and searing right into his neck where they’d shot him with sedative, Lance rolled his shoulders a few times to loosen up stiff muscles. He was beginning to suspect that the freaking guards had intended to dislocate something, because _ow ow OW,_ something was definitely _not_ where it was supposed to be.

But Lance remembered his training.

Stay calm, that was focus number one.  _Whatever you do, do not panic._ It was common sense more than anything, not that Lance had much of it, but at least his sniper training had given him _some_ sense of self-preservation.  And he wasn’t going to exacerbate what was already damaged. He’d figure something out.

The next thing to do was examine his surroundings and figure out where the hell he was.

Okay, easy enough. He was in a holding cell.

A rather big one, if he was being honest; He didn’t really think every one of the Galra’s prisoners was being kept in as spacious a chamber as this one. The floor was solid and hard on his back (which was why he’d been so keen on sitting up as quickly as possible), and they hadn't even bothered to put him on the bed. And yes, there _was_ a bed, surprisingly enough. Or a crappy excuse for one, anyway. It looked like a cot, waiting for him in one corner—more or less. It was barely passable for a cot, the mattress couldn’t have been more than three inches thick and made from the material people normally used for curtains, and the farthest back corner sported an unappealing excuse for a latrine, incredibly small, with no sink in sight.

Although, when he looked again he caught sight of a little doohickey that looked similar to a dispenser for hand sanitizer, so maybe that was something he could use.

No windows. No matter, he’d never been able to distinguish one meteor belt from another, anyway (one of the weaknesses he refused to admit). If only he had the rest of his equipment, he’d be able to pull up coordinates, no problem.

Confiscated, naturally.

Now for the rest of his surroundings… well, he was cut off from the rest of the world (the rest of the universe, more like) by a clear wall, instead of bars like a traditional Earth prison. Lance didn’t feel like standing up quite yet, but he did manage a weak scooch until he made it to the separator, pressing his forehead to the glass to look outside.

It was difficult to see clearly, but Lance’s eyes were sharp as a hawk’s (a natural-born hitman, he always said)—he could work with a little mood lighting. He would’ve appreciated the ambience, even, if only he discarded the fact that this was a prison, not a restaurant.

The cell was probably somewhere in the ass-end of one of the corridors designed for detaining prisoners and nothing else. The Galran bastille contained a multitude of cells that lined the walls, with dimmed, reddish-purple lights that glowed just above every other one.

It was a space reserved for the Galra’s greatest enemies—as one of the guards had mentioned in so many words amidst the clipped lingo of their military, all while he and another guard hauled Lance off to the ‘dungeons.’

They weren’t dungeons, obviously, but to Lance, they might as well have been. Lance was partial to referring to the place as ‘the dungeons,’ because that was exactly what the corridor full of dark cells reminded him of. Only, these were far more high-tech.

The walls of the corridors and the rest of his cell were made of a smooth material that Lance was unfamiliar with, although it was metallic according to the sound it gave when he rapped his gloved knuckles against one of them.

But then, he’d received a weak shock up his arm for his trouble.

Hissing, he tugged his hand away and swiveled his head around. Big mistake. All the blood rushed to his cheeks, and his head swam; he nearly fell back to the floor on account of the sudden, strong wave of vertigo. Ughh, everything felt _off_. Was the floor moving? Dang, they’d really knocked him out good.

No wonder. He’d probably been putting up quite the fight, but _holy pancakes with gravy_ how was he not _dead_ yet? He’d been about to blast that mark all the way to the other end of the universe, and here he was, getting the royal treatment in a holding cell. If anything, he’d expected to wake up strapped to a table with bright lights in his face and an interrogation officer grilling him for information—while holding a laser gun to his head.

A sniper of Voltron would undoubtedly be on a list of names belonging to the most-wanted creatures, human or otherwise, in the Galra Empire. It had once given Lance great pride, if not a swollen ego, to think that he had a bounty on his head for being just that good a marksman.

Nope. No, this was not fun.

It had never _been_ fun, but now that Lance was well and truly stuck, there was no pretending that it was, anymore. All he could do was thank his lucky stars that they hadn’t killed him on sight.

They _had_ crushed his helmet, though.

His comms unit was smashed to hell. He’d heard the sickening _crrrunch_ of the metal and plastic just before he passed out, and now he had no way of sending for backup.

His team was smart enough that they’d figure something was up within, oh, no less than ten minutes. Lance did tend to screw around and take detours.

But Galra ships were fast, and their soldiers were smart. Even with such a snappy reaction time on team Voltron’s part, it might still end up being too late. For Lance, at least.

The clear plexiglass-hybrid wall separating him from the rest of the known universe was so clear, Lance would have walked right into it if he didn’t have at least a few brain cells. He didn’t doubt the consequences would be worse than a little shock if he tried banging away at that thing. Touching it gently hadn’t seemed like an issue, but he didn’t want to test any new theories.

Not yet, anyway.

 *****  

**()0()**

*****

_**Location: Voltron Headquarters - Planet: Arus**_

_Three Hours Earlier_

“Coran, the transmissions aren’t going through,” Pidge said from the communications room at the Voltron Headquarters, fingers flying over the keypad of the holo-screen , searching for something to fix. Anything, anything she might find that had been damaged within the past ten minutes.

But as it turned out, the damage hadn’t been on their end, it had been on Lance’s. “That _idiot_ ,” Pidge hissed nervously, her activity at the screen becoming more frantic. “Answer me man, c’mon, now’s not the time for jokes…” but Pidge knew Lance couldn’t hear. Just as suspected, Lance had bitten off more than he could chew.

“I _knew_ we shouldn’t have given him that job,” said Allura, looking harried as she powered her way through the doors and onto the deck, where Coran eyed the monitors with a frown and Pidge muttered expletives into their comms unit. “Lance may be a good marksman, but infiltrating one of the biggest Galra warships in the known universe? We should have found someone else. If I know Lance, he’s probably gotten himself captured.”

“Don’t say that,” Coran murmured, but Allura ignored it.

“Should we go after him?” Pidge asked, edgy as her fingers slowed at the keypad of the holo-screen.

Just then, Shiro entered the room, suited up in full gear. Hunk followed close behind, lugging a hefty box of spare wiring, probably expecting that the damage had, in fact, been on their end.

“I guess this makes the extraction a little tougher, huh?” said Shiro, his expression schooled. Leave it to Shiro to remain totally calm.

Allura shook her head, brow pinched in thought. “What we need is to get a reading on the ship’s coordinates and have them tracked. Going in immediately would be… predictable.”

“Not to mention suicidal,” Hunk chimed in helpfully, letting the crate of the wires and spare parts drop dejectedly to the floor.

With a heavy sigh, Coran pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “That ship is too far to get a good reading, and the transmission from Lance’s own comms unit was temperamental at best.”

“And, something tells me Lance doesn’t have his helmet anymore, if he’s been captured,” Pidge interjected. The typing at the keypad had all but ceased in the confusion. Shiro was the only one who didn’t seem to be losing his cool.

“Well…” Shiro murmured, and everyone suddenly stopped firing away their own theories to give the team leader their full attention. Takashi “Shiro” Shirogane, team Voltron’s exploration specialist, was the leader of the group for a reason. He was a natural-born speaker, a stoic in the face of disaster, and when it came down to it, he loved all the other Paladins like his own family. Their dynamic was unbreakable.

But he was also the most insistently self-sacrificing person within the team, and sometimes, that quality was more bad than good. “You could still send me in for extraction,” he suggested.

“Shiro, absolutely not,” Allura insisted, looking even more frenzied as she marched past Coran to check for anything he might have missed. He hadn’t, of course, but Allura was worried all the same. “This isn’t a simple extraction anymore. This would mean a full-on battle, now that one of our Paladins has not only been spotted, but most likely captured." Crossing her arms, she sighed and shook her head. "If he’s been imprisoned, we have little to no chance of getting Lance back if we go about this rashly.”

“I’m with Allura on this one, guys,” Hunk added. “Going in right now? The Galra might be purple and fuzzy but they’re definitely not stupid. They’d expect us to send in a rescue team immediately… They’re probably waiting for us right _now_.” He twiddled his thumbs, cringing at the prospect.

“Hunk makes a good point,” said Coran.

Shoulders sagging, Pidge fixed her glasses and sighed. “So… what do we do, then?”

“Oh, Shiro will still be going after the ship,” Allura said immediately. Shiro frowned and turned to look at her carefully.

“Wait, what?” he asked, bewildered. “Didn’t we just agree that that was a bad idea?”

“Not entirely,” Allura mused, arms behind her back. Her own outfit was less for space travel and more for the everyday business of running an elite crew of fighters: Altean fashion, a deep blue coat with trimmings of white, cinched at the waist and sharp-shouldered. Sturdy enough to endure a heavy beating. The rest was simpler, a plain white turtleneck, undoubtedly weapons-proofed as most Altean clothing had been made, what with their technology unheard of on earth, and fitted black pants with a pair of knee-high combat boots, thick-soled and excellent for running and training. Allura was always ready for action.

Coran, on the other hand, sported his trademark Altean-chic waistcoat, fitted black pants like Allura’s, and boots with pointy tips. Great for kicking your enemies in the backside, but not so great for running. Everyone else wore their civvies or, in Shiro’s case, his Paladin suit.

“Nobody’s dancing their way into a Galra ship unprepared,” Allura said determinedly, “all we need you to do, Shiro, is get close enough to the ship with your black cruiser that you’re able to get an accurate read on their coordinates. And a signature of their predicted route, if you can get it. Just so we can stay on top of them if they decide to relocate.”

“Can do,” said Shiro, offering up a reassuring smile to Pidge, who looked worried, and Hunk, who looked a little like he could use a hug. “Don’t worry guys, we’re going to find Lance,” he said, firm, “We’ll get him back.” With a curt nod to Allura, he added, “Your highness, I will do everything in my power to return our teammate to safety. That’s a promise.”

“For the last time, _Allura_ , please,” Allura said, but she was smiling, however weak the smile was. “And I have my full trust you will not fail.” Looking around at the rest of the Paladins, who were all silent, she sighed again and nodded back to Shiro.

Her team was more than she could ever ask for, but sometimes, she hated what their jobs entailed.

 

 *****  

**()0()**

*****

 

Lance remained alone in the quiet of the cell for what felt like hours, just sitting on the uncomfortable mattress, attempting to make light of things.

Hey, he’d technically infiltrated enemy territory, right?

If he escaped, he’d at least know exactly where the Galra were keeping some of their prisoners. Prisoners who either wouldn’t or couldn’t approach their own cell separators, or bring themselves to even speak, as Lance heard no noise from a single creature, aside from himself and his own, steady breathing. The other chambers filling the cell block must have been empty. That, or the prisoners were seriously sedated.

Lance’s shoulder still hurt, but not as much as before. He hoped that was a good thing.

The old scar running along his left shoulder-blade, however, was twinging. Holy crow, that thing hadn’t hurt him in _months._ Not since…

Well, that wasn’t an experience he wanted to reminisce on right now.

 

He wasn’t sure how long he dozed off for, but when he woke again, it was to a sharp _tap tapping_ at the plexiglass partition.

Stirring, Lance sat up on the mattress and rubbed a hand over his face. His stomach felt empty. And he had to pee. Great. Perfect timing.

“He’s awake,” someone said from outside, low and throaty. The voice grated on Lance’s ears and made his insides squirm.

Two Galra stood just outside of his cell; one had the most enormous set of ears Lance had ever seen, a red, mechanized monocle over one eye, and sharp teeth bared in a vicious leer. Lance vaguely recognized him from one of team Voltron’s enemy files: This was commander Sendak, a deadly foe in hand-to-hand combat and a man whose only goal was success, or death. A true Galran.

The other man was much shorter, no taller than Lance if he had to guess and, by most Galra standards, tiny compared to the rest of their species.

His skin was smoother than the fuzzy patchiness most Galra possessed, his ears not quite so imposing on the rest of his features, and his eyes weren’t as unsettling. He had a shock of black hair, shiny and mussed in all the right ways. The style was incredibly retro by Lance’s standards but it took nothing away from the man’s appearance. If anything, it complemented it.

 

This was, of course, Lance’s mark.

And the guy didn’t even have to say anything for Lance to decide that he was already, hopelessly done for.


	3. Cell Block Tango

Lance’s mark.

 _Former mark_.

He’d failed the mission. The man was still alive.

But so was Lance. It was the little victories that counted.

The Galran prince- probably one of many, since the Galra were an enormous population in the known universe. This 'prince' in particular wasn’t a very big name as far as royal families went in the Galra empire, but the man’s bloodline was connected to the right sorts of people. Just the right sorts to keep him in the Galra Empire’s _very_ good graces, as if his fighting experience and piloting background weren’t already enough.

“Leave me,” the shorter of the two said, quirking his head to eye Sendak briefly, “I want to speak to him alone.”

Sendak bowed his head, curt, looking reluctant to leave the other man alone with a wanted prisoner. But it didn't seem like he could do much to protest. Glaring through the cell’s separating wall towards Lance, the Galra commander turned on his heel and stalked off, heading out of sight as he left the cell block.

A silence that felt like an eternity overcame the cell again.

Finally, he spoke.

“You already know who I am,” he said, impassive.

It wasn’t a question. So Lance didn’t answer. The Galra eyed him with a curious expression, tilting his head marginally to look Lance up and down, and Lance was suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

He didn’t have his Paladin suit on anymore, which bummed him out a bit, as he felt much more exposed considering how differently he was dressed without any sort of armor for protection.

As of right now, Lance was dressed in the waist-to-ankle spandex he normally wore under the Paladin suit, his black undershirt, and another shirt that was frayed around the neck and wrists, practically coming apart at the seams. The material was coarse and uncomfortable. He hadn’t noticed the clothes, at first, upon his waking; now that the sedative had worn off almost entirely, Lance realized that he really didn’t have much on, save the spandex, the socks that he’d been wearing for eleven hours straight (probably more, by now) and the black prison-issued shirt, long-sleeved and too wide for his wiry torso and thinner arms. His neck felt exposed, and he was thankful for the undershirt.

The Galran, on the other hand, was suited up and ready for action as all Galra military were, and while he looked imposing in his own way, Lance couldn’t help but notice how much slighter he looked in comparison to the others.

A thinner waist, shoulders not quite so broad despite the way his armor added some extra bulk, his hair was curled gently at the ends and dark, almost black if not for the purple tint when it caught the light. Raven, that was the word.

Softer features. Like someone had been given a description of what Galra were _supposed_ to look like, but then stylized the image, rounding out the features a little and adding something distinctly human to the mix. And it wasn’t bad at all.

At least, not in Lance’s opinion.

"Here to gloat, huh?" Lance croaked, smacking his lips for want of some water. Anything to help with the dry mouth was fine, really. He licked his chapped lips and gave a cough to clear his throat.

“Why were you sent to kill me?” the other man asked, alert from the other side of the glass. The way he posed the question was so _innocent_. He really, truly sounded like he was genuinely curious about why _any_ one would ever be out for his head. Was he for real?

Lance almost laughed.

“Are you serious right now, buddy?” Lance asked, lifting a disbelieving eyebrow. He didn’t even give the Galra (sergeant-prince-whatever-the-hell he was) the courtesy of shuffling any closer to the wall that separated them, choosing to remain in his spot on the hard cot.

The prince scowled, folding his arms across his chest. “What makes you think I’d joke about something like that?” he asked.

This time, Lance _did_ laugh. It was true, the guy did seem nearly incapable of making a joke. But the question was still impossibly strange. “Um, okay,” said Lance, gesturing flippantly with one hand, “Well, for starters, you’re a pretty wanted man in the non-Galran part of the universe, my friend. You were kind of a job I couldn’t afford to pass up.”

The other man raised an eyebrow, but said nothing more in reply.

“What," Lance deadpanned, "don’t you think with your sort of background you’d be on at _least_ one or two hit lists by now?”

“Not a human one, no,” said the Galra, with a slow shake of his head. “I’m just surprised you made it this far, to be honest.”

Lance narrowed his eyes. “Sure, make fun of me while I’m literally your prisoner.”

“Don’t start making this weird.”

Lance made a face, perturbed. “I…. wasn’t?”

He couldn’t really tell, since none of the Galra actually had pupils, just yellow sclera and darker yellow irises with nothing in the middle, but if Lance had to guess, he’d say that the man was rolling his eyes. He knew that look well enough from Pidge.

“I asked you a question.”

“Right,” Lance muttered, rolling his shoulder again when another flare of pain shot through the muscles pulling there. “Why was I sent to kill you? Well, for starters,” he held up a hand, beginning to count off on his fingers, “you’re dogfighting scum, you’re Galra, you’re a Galra _soldier,_ and from what I’ve heard, a piece of shit. Oh wait, _sorry,_ make that a _royal_ piece of shit.” He grit his teeth when the pain in his dislocated shoulder got worse. But the other man must have assumed he was grimacing from the words, and he scowled.

“Wow, that really is a load of _shit_ coming from you _,_ ” the soldier replied, laughing bitterly as he shook his head in disbelief. Lance was thrown off guard by the man's laugh, so unlike anything he would have pictured in his head. “Says the guy who literally kills people for a living.”

That was fair enough. But Lance came back with his own rebuttal, snapping, “I do what I have to, and it’s not like I’m killing innocents. Not like _you_ do.”

“Who said I ever killed innocents?”

“You’re funny.”

“I’m serious.”

Lance looked him straight in the eye, actually scooting around on his cot to look at the guy properly, and said, all traces of joking aside, “I know what you are, and you’re Galra. Any soldier of the Galra has killed at least one poor creature that’s stood in the way of your precious Empire.” He set his jaw, raising his chin defiantly as if daring the other man to deny it.

With a glare, the soldier answered with his own question, “Do you _always_ generalize races like this?”

“ _Generalize?_ ” Lance snorted. “I don’t have to make any generalizations for your kind. You’re all the same. Always have been.”

For a moment, there was no answer. If anything, the man on the outside of the cell looked something akin to discouraged.

Then he shook his head, like he was clearing his thoughts, and shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. You can believe what you want, but hey, at least I’ve got _some_ manners. I made sure you weren’t thrown into one of the bad cells.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “How _thoughtful_ of you.”

“Don’t be rude."

“I wasn’t," Lance snapped. "And you’re the one to talk, you… uh…”

The soldier looked at him, all ears.

Lance realized he still didn’t know this guy’s name. In this case he wasn’t, uh, technically supposed to. Not when said person was his mark- but hey, this guy wasn’t really his mark anymore, was he?

“Quick question...” Lance hedged, against his better judgment, “Just curious but, what’s your name?”

“My _name?_ ” the other man asked, baffled. “You mean you don’t know it?” He gave Lance a very pointed look, as if to also say, _Come on, you probably know how many times a day I have a piss, let alone my first name, assuming you’ve got files on me mister Voltron sniper._

“Not supposed to. Part of the job,” Lance said, not caring enough to elaborate.

"So what  _do_ you know?"

"Enough."

“…Ah.” That just seemed to confuse the soldier even more, but then, all he did was shrug, and answer, “Uh… It’s um, it's Keith?”

“Ke—? _Pffftt_!” Lance threw his head back when he laughed before he could stop himself, shoulders shaking , which— _ouch, that hurt._ He quickly smacked a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound, but by then it was already too late.

The man on the other side of the nearly invisible wall raised an imperious eyebrow. “What is so funny?”

“Funny? N-nothing.” Lance almost choked on his own words as he leaned against the wall behind him for support. Really, this situation was far from funny. It was terrifying, actually, but come _on,_ this guy’s name— of all the names he could have had—was freaking _Keith._ That was hilarious.

Lance could appreciate hilarious.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Lance gasped, trying to compose himself. He didn’t dare make eye contact, because if he did now, those yellow eyes would definitely render him speechless, and he didn’t want that. He was in enemy territory, but he wasn’t going to lose his dignity altogether, no sir. “It’s just… _Keith._ Come on, man!” He stifled another round of ugly laughter, biting at the inside of his cheek to keep a straight face. “That’s like, the furthest thing from... y'know what, don't worry about it. Is that like a nickname they gave you, or did your fuzzy purple mama and papa actually call you that when you were born?” Another snort.

Lance was starting to regret his actions, however, because not a moment later the Galra prince glared and bared his teeth, revealing a set of pearly whites that looked, for the most part, human, but the canines were definitely Galra, tapered at the ends and sharp enough to puncture skin without effort.

“I don’t talk about my parents,” he growled.

Lance’s lingering fit of giggles died down instantly. He raised his hands up, calling a silent truce. “All right, all right, so your name’s Keith,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m Lance. And now I know the name of the guy I’m supposed to kill. That’s… great.”

Keith smirked. “And now _I_ know the name of the guy who almost killed me.”

“It was either that, or you would’ve killed _me.”_

“Does it _look_ like I’m about to kill you?” Another fair point.

Lance pouted; he was _not_ happy to be consistently one-upped by this royal pain in the butt. And a _Galra._ “Your buddies back in the hangar could’ve done me in, though,” he pointed out with a stubborn look, before remembering mournfully that his cruiser was back there, too, hidden in the storage unit. Someone had probably found it by now. They could do what they wanted to his suit and his helmet, but the ice cold feeling of dread washed through him at the thought of someone hurting the blue cruiser, his  _baby..._

 

“But they didn’t,” Keith refuted, cocking his head casually to the side.

Right, they hadn’t killed him. Lucky Lance. That was another weird little detail: Why _had_ Lance been allowed to live? It was one of the many questions niggling at the back of his mind.

"So…. Why didn't you let that soldier kill me?" Lance wondered aloud.

No answer.

Lance huffed, before finally bolstering his nerve and standing up from the thin mattress, wincing at the way his knees felt like metal hinges that hadn’t been oiled in months.

As steadily as he could manage, he strode up to the partition and leaned against it, one hand on the glass and the other situated on a cocked hip, all false confidence and very little else. "All right mister silent treatment,” he murmured, staring through the glass with a leer he reserved for only a few, and only when the argument was getting interesting, “fine, so why didn't you oust me earlier? I _know_ you saw me at _least_ two minutes before I was caught by that eight-foot brick wall with arms." If Lance’s vision had been even a fraction less than what it was, he might have missed the tiny smile flashing across the Galran's face, before it was wiped away again. "Do you have a death wish? Is that what that was?" Lance challenged, leaning even closer to the glass wall, "You wanted to die?"

"Obviously not, or I would've done it myself by now," said Keith, without a moment's hesitation. But it took him a little more time to follow up on the answer. "I was... I was thinking you might still find a way out of there,” he murmured, quiet.

"Don't you realize I could've killed you either way?" said Lance. "You should've ousted me the second you realized I was there." If the situation hadn’t been so ridiculous, Lance might have taken an interest in the way neither of their voices was muffled at all, despite the fact that they were separated by at least three inches of plexiglass and whatever else these buggers used for the holding cells.

Suddenly there was a smirk teasing at the corners of the Galran's pale, lavender lips, and this time it didn’t disappear. "I had a feeling you wouldn't shoot."

Lance glared, raising an eyebrow in offense. "Oh? And why's that?"

"Because I heard you up there for at least five minutes, yammering away to someone else while you had your gun trained at my head. Nice hiding spot, by the way.”

"Wait wait, you _heard_ me?" Lance was stunned.

Even for a Galra (yeah, even with those ridiculous ears), that level of hearing must have been incredibly sharp. Keith must have been one in a million. Lance _knew_ he was different.

“How much did you hear?” he asked.

“From you? Everything.” There was a smirk creeping over the soldier’s – _Keith’s_ – lips and glinting in his eyes, and the guy didn’t need a pair of pupils for Lance to know that this Galra was looking him dead in the eye. “Although, I couldn’t hear who you were talking to.” He looked pensive for a tick. “Well, okay, I did hear _one_ thing, but only because they sounded like they were shouting.”

Lance’s stomach felt like it was sinking a little. He swallowed, before finding the nerve to ask, “What did you hear?”

With a twitch pulling at the corners of his mouth, the Galra prince answered with such a placid expression that it amazed Lance, “I believe the words were, ‘Stop thinking with your dick and start thinking with your head?’”

 

Oh.

 

Shit, this guy really did have great hearing.

Lance hoped the lights were dim enough to hide the pink threatening to color his cheeks. Now it was just embarrassing.

But Keith looked undisturbed. “I'm guessing whoever they were, they were your director, or close enough. Their voice was pretty quiet over your comms unit up until that point. Tell me, how much time would you guess is left,” Keith asked, leaning forward until his nose was almost touching the glass, “before your team figures out you’ve gone MIA?”

“Screw you, man,” Lance snapped. The hand braced against the glass curled inward, turning his knuckles almost white. “I could’ve killed you so quickly you wouldn’t know what hit you.”

“You’re a little too cocky, you know that?”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Hey, I’m just saying,” said Keith, giving a shrug and making the shoulder armour of his suit bunch up just below his fuzzy Galra ears, “If you couldn't do it in the first minute, I knew you wouldn't do it at all. You humans… you interest me."

“I’m flattered.”

“I’ll have more questions for you when I get back.”

Lance frowned, removing his hand from the glass when his legs finally proved to be a bit steadier beneath him. “What, you have to leave already? For a minute there I thought we were having a moment,” he teased, allowing one of his trademark, 'full-on-flirty-Lance' grins to stretch across his face. He gave his eyebrows a sultry wag for good measure.

Keith was having none of it, apparently. “Believe it or not," he answered, voice clipped, "I’ve got my own responsibilities. As _Master Sergeant_ of squadron forty-two of the Galra Empire’s top-tier battalions, a little respect wouldn’t hurt.”

“No,” muttered Lance, “I guess it wouldn't. But my shoulder sure as starfire does.” He flew the one-fingered salute halfheartedly over his head, before turning around to head back to his cot, fully intending to try and sleep off the worst of the pain. He’d have to pop that sucker back into its socket sooner or later, but he didn’t feel like he had the strength to do it now. And he certainly didn't feel like dealing with an egotistical Galra brat with sensitivity issues, on top of it all.

“What do you mean?” he heard Keith ask.

And the funny thing was, he actually sounded concerned. Lance really wished this guy would stop playing these mind games with him.

Turning around with a tight frown, Lance gestured irritably towards his right arm with his left hand, wincing with the movement. Then lowered himself to the cot, and tried not to move the arm at all.

Keith seemed to understand, because something like realization clicked in expression, and his gaze flicked from Lance, to his left, then to his right, presumably to check and make sure no one was coming his way.

 

“Stand up," he hissed, whirling his head back around to look at Lance, "and back up to the wall over there."

_Huh?_

“Uh, what?” Lance asked, not bothering to lower his own voice.

“I _said,_ back up to the wall.” Keith pointed to the back wall of the cell, opposite from where he was. “Now.”

Lance gave Keith a baffled look, but as he was in absolutely no position to argue, he stood from the cot slowly and backed up, passing the latrine, until his back was almost pressed against the wall. What, was he going to get scanned? Receive a security pat-down? Was the guy going to come in and beat him up? He doubted that, but anything was possible, he guessed.

“And don’t try anything,” Keith added, keeping his voice low. Double checking the hall on either side again, Keith reached out a gloved hand and tapped at something just outside the cell—a keypad, maybe? He was typing something in. A code?

Wait, was he going to…?

Yeah, he _was._

 

With a _swish,_ the glass wall slid down into the floor. Lance stared.

Keith had opened the door.

Lance could make a run for it _right now_.

 

But then, he realized he'd have nowhere to go. He had no armor. No weapons. He would be killed on sight for sure, no exceptions this time.

So he remained rooted in place against the back wall, eyes glued to the Galra soldier as he stepped into the cell, taking sure strides across the floor as he approached Lance, gaze intense.

When he was just two feet away from Lance, he stopped.

Then he reached out a hand, and gently laid it on Lance’s right arm. Lance did his best not to flinch away from the contact, but his shoulder was really starting to twinge now. Keith's other hand grasped his other shoulder, the non-injured one, more firmly. Like he was bracing himself for something.

“Just… try to think of something happy,” Keith whispered, keeping his face angled towards Lance's right side, and Lance frowned.

"Happy?" Lance asked skeptically.

"Just do it."

“Wha—fucking _shit OW!”_

The most incredible pain tore through him then, and it sent white spots flaring bright behind his eyes, briefly cutting off his vision. Lance very nearly lost consciousness. The next thing he knew, an arm covered in thin, flexible Galran armor was pressing against his chest, holding him upright against the wall so he wouldn’t keel over.

“Consider that proof,” Keith breathed into Lance’s ear, giving a soft tap to Lance’s aching arm, “that maybe we’re not all as bad as you think.”

 

A tick later, he was gone, and in an instant the soldier was standing on the other side of the glass wall as it _swished_ shut again. Keith didn’t look back at all as he stepped out of sight, stalking down the corridor and away from the cell block without another word, leaving Lance a little speechless, and a lot like he could use some paracetamol.

And he  _still_ had to pee. But mostly, he needed a nap.

Lance was alone, he was trapped in a cell and _far_ from being anything close to safe, but at least his shoulder was back where it was supposed to be. So.... It was better to look on the bright side, Lance supposed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He shoves his screwed up arm back into place and nearly knocks Lance out from the pain *bats eyes* SO romantic amiright??? No but seriously, I really love this au and really want to build onto it, and the comments are really, deeply appreciated!
> 
> also, I do have a [tumblr](http://animationfanatic.tumblr.com/)!


	4. Cloak and Dagger

 

The journey from Arus to the orbit of the Galra warship currently holding Lance took about ten hours, total. When he had the ship within his sight, just a speck in the distance, Shiro slowed his cruiser to a complete stop in dead space.

He prayed the cruiser wouldn’t be jacked by some renegade aliens in his absence. As much as he wished he could’ve taken his precious black cruiser, Shiro had no choice but to leave it behind or risk being caught. The Voltron cruisers weren’t exactly difficult to spot when they got close enough to Galra tech, even with Voltron’s impressive cloaking techniques. Shiro couldn’t get closer than about twenty klicks away from the warship before he had to stop.

For the rest of this journey, he’d have to rely on a very small, somewhat claustrophobia-inducing escape pod, and pray to every deity ever conceived that nothing intercepted the pod’s path. If something knocked the thing even a millimeter off, he was screwed. Funny how math worked like that.

After a few quick words from Pidge, reminding him to program the exact coordinates she’d relayed to him earlier, Shiro sent out the signal that the plan was underway.

After that, he copied out with a touch on the sensor in his helmet, and jabbed the button to launch.

"Operation Extract Paladin Dumbass” was a-go.

The name was Pidge’s idea. Hunk had suggested something a little bit kinder, but there was no changing it now. Shiro had rolled his eyes, silently deciding to just call the plan “Operation Get Blue” and be done with it. The plan was simple enough in concept; Shiro would fly the pod a distance from the ship, eject and float to the doors of the waste unit, where he would wait for Pidge to hack the door and let him in.

Now, with the pod hurtling towards the warship’s lower quarters, there was no turning back. Not that Shiro was ever the type to turn back.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

For the past ten hours or so, Lance had whiled away the day lying on his cot, feet propped up against the wall as he fought off the growing boredom, trying not to think too much about the ache in his shoulder.

He’d expected to be interrogated further by one of his captors. No such luck, it seemed. He _was_ finally fed, at least.

A sentry had been sent perhaps two or three hours after Keith’s departure, and a small tray was shoved in through a slit in the wall that Lance hadn’t noticed before.

The food was terrible – Lance had expected nothing less. There was a tiny bowl of sludge that he guessed had been white, at some point, but had since turned an unappealing grey; there was also a small, dry lump of something he assumed was meat from the way it was tinged red, a bit like the color of rust. And then there was a cup of green stuff, which smelled medicinal and foul but, seeing as Lance hadn’t had anything to drink within the last day, was his best bet at relieving his dry mouth.

Almost his best bet. The first two gulps went down all right, but the third was too much to handle; he spat it out, coughing and spluttering, trying to get the taste off his tongue.

Great, now his cot was going to have a green stain for the rest of his time in here. Not that it made much of a difference, with the general dullness of the minimalist décor already proving awful enough.

That green stuff was _definitely_ not Nunvil. It was worse.

After his meal, he sat in a dull haze by the glass partition of the cell, hoping to see any sign of activity, but the cell block remained eerily quiet.

 

He passed what must have been hours, just sitting there, before Lance finally gave in and shuffled back to his cot, curling into himself tightly and wondering if anyone was on their way to find him.

He both prayed that that was true, and also desperately wished that his team would stay far, far away from these buggers. Being here was pretty bad, but seeing the rest of his team here would feel fifty times worse to Lance. He would take a spot alone in a holding cell over the second choice, any day.

With that in mind, he tried to shake off the growing anxiety and overwhelming time blindness, and somehow, he managed to drift off to sleep.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Day, night, it felt a little blurred together.

Lance did _not_ _enjoy_ being woken up before he’d had his proper beauty rest.

Sure, so maybe his arm had been fixed up all right, and he'd gotten more sleep than he normally did, ever. But that didn't mean he wasn't still feeling like a dead man walking.

Waking up to the sounds of crying was _not_ how he wanted to start his first, official day in Galra prison. Not that he could tell whether it was morning or night when there were no windows and everything looked the same.

The only light in Lance’s cell was mounted to the wall across from his cot, glowing the same dull, purplish glow as the ones in the halls of the cell block. It never switched off and it almost seemed to pulse, which was really starting to give Lance a headache. Maybe it was a torture technique—slowly drive the prisoner up the wall with migraines.

And he was hungry again.

They must bring semi-regular meals, right? But… was it the sort of thing where they just fed you enough to keep you alive, or was it actually a decent two or three meal-a-day package deal? Lance hoped for the latter. He really didn’t want dried alien food and green acid juice to be his last meal.

 

His focus snapped back to the growing sound of someone sobbing.

It was coming from outside of his cell (well, duh) so naturally, Lance was going to try and find out why he’d been so prematurely woken from his sleep.

Stretching his good arm out above his head and grimacing through a yawn when the other arm wouldn’t cooperate, he sat up from his cot and scooted around. Shaky on his legs, he dragged himself over to the glass partition, and looked out.

What he saw in the corridor made his insides churn.

An alien – a prisoner by the looks of their uniform--  was being dragged out of a cell just a few down from Lance’s. This guy (or girl? Or maybe neither) looked, no other word for it, terrible. Lance wasn’t sure if the prisoner was sick, or if their complexion was just naturally that green; either way, they were hunched forward, hardly strong enough to stand, and one of their three-fingered hands with filed claws came up to wrap around their abdomen, like they were having some serious stomach pains.

The Galra sentries leading the prisoner away did absolutely nothing to help. If anything, they were making the situation worse by jabbing their detainee, who couldn’t have been more than five foot, with some nasty-looking devices resembling cattle prods. The metal devices sparked at the ends, and they looked painful. Lance couldn't imagine how they must have felt. The sentries gave a jab every ten seconds or so, and each time, the prisoner let out a horrible combination of guttural groans and high-pitched whines, mixed with a sound that wasn't so different from a human's crying. Lance couldn’t bear to look, let alone listen.

And he almost looked away.

But he didn’t, and he was almost glad for it, because not a moment later someone else strode down the corridor from behind, passing Lance’s cell without so much as a glance before he fell into step with the sentries, trailing just behind.

Lance watched, shocked, when Keith—the very same who had not only allowed Lance to live, but had also fixed his shoulder— gave no reaction at all when the sentries continued to jab at the prisoner with their sadistic little devices.  

Nothing out of the entire scene made a lick of sense to Lance.

But he did know that whatever he’d been feeling for Keith, whatever small trickle of hope (or maybe even _trust_ ) that had begun to make its way into his mind, was crushed to dust at the sight outside his cell. Keith, unresponsive as a prisoner was dragged away, in pain, with no help or even a simple act of kindness in sight.

And the worst part of it all? Lance had... had  _wanted_ to trust Keith. He'd wanted to believe what the man had told him earlier, that not all of them were bad. Not all the Galra were heartless monsters. Not all of them reveled in the suffering of others. Now, Lance could see the truth.

Maybe he'd been wrong to hope for anything different.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

“Shiro, did you make it?” Pidge’s voice returned, and Shiro grinned.

“Nearly, there,” he said, “I’ve reached the docking station.”

He punched the button on the control panel to start the jets at the front of the pod, slowing it down until it came to a standstill, free-floating in space just a few meters away from the docking station where waste was taken out, and cargo was loaded in.

The next part was the easiest— the timing had been perfect, as usual. Pidge really was a genius. She'd been right, no one was coming in or going out at this time exactly, but Shiro only had an hour or two at most. The cloaking on his suit would only hold for so long.

The last few meters to the empty loading dock only required a couple quick blasts from the jetpack, and after that, he was in.

 

Shiro found himself in a very spacious chamber. Stacked twenty feet high on all sides were various pieces of equipment, loads of weapons in metal crates, and just enough hiding places that Shiro had no trouble ghosting past the first guard to get a better reading on the ship’s signature.

With the basic signature code relayed back to Pidge, he snuck back the way he came, edging over towards the exit with his blaster ready. Just in case.

He had no Bayard, as the Galra had stolen it four years back—a shitty memory on the best of days— but this replacement blaster was top of the line and hadn’t failed him yet. He gently removed his helmet, just after assuring Pidge that he just wanted to scope out the room, see if Lance might still be here, hiding or just waiting.

It had been forty-eight hours. Shiro doubted Lance would have made it that long in this room without getting caught. But there must be _something_ he could find, anything that might help him locate their lost Paladin.

There were small windows, round and only about a foot in diameter, spaced out around the storage chamber. Shiro peered through the closest one and gave Pidge the all clear over the comms.

 

That was when he noticed something strange **:** A small ship, maybe big enough to fit ten, max, was cruising along in the opposite direction of the Galra ship.

This spacecraft looked Galran as well… but what was it doing alone? And where was it going?

With a carefully timed _tap tap_ on a key from one of the cuffs of his suit, Shiro aimed his wrist towards the window and sent out a minute scanning blip.

He waited a few ticks, before the blip bounced off the small spacecraft and came back with coordinates on the tiny screen of his cuff, along with a vague signature code from the ship, a more distinct signature from the pilot, and the additional heat signatures of eight or nine other life forms within the spacecraft. Shiro raised an eyebrow when he saw the file results on the pilot.

“Pidge, get the others,” Shiro murmured over the comms.

“They’re already here, Purple,” Pidge answered immediately.

“Great,” said Shiro, “I’m sending over a signature now—it’s from a smaller ship. It looks like Lance’s mark is still alive and kicking.”

“Yeah, we figured that much when Lance said he was 'calling it.' Just before he got his ass captured.”

True to Shiro’s word, the pilot of the red and black spacecraft matched up perfectly with the files programmed into every Paladin’s gear. The pilot was none other than the Galran prince, Lance’s mark #223. Still alive.

_Dammit, Lance._

Shiro received nothing on Lance’s signature. It was safe to say that the blue Paladin wasn’t with this guy. Just a bunch of other aliens. Whatever this Galra was doing, Shiro could only assume the worst.

“I’m going to see if I can find any sign of where the holding cells might be,” Shiro whispered through the wireless. He shuddered at the thought of reliving those nightmares all over again, seeing the Galra prison and the cells, but it was a necessary evil for a mission of this caliber. “Take those coordinates and do what you will, but Lance is top priority.”

“Obviously,” Pidge muttered. “Hey!” she shouted, and she didn’t sound like she was talking to Shiro anymore, “what’re you-?”

Shiro frowned when Pidge’s voice faded into the background.

But in the next moment, it was Allura’s voice that took over. “Shiro, did you make it? Pidge hasn’t been telling us much.”

 _'Have so!'_ came Pidge's voice.

“Shh!” Allura shushed back. Shiro waited patiently for Allura’s focus to return. When it did, she said, “I want to know where you are, exactly.”

“I’m in the main storage facility,” Shiro answered, “the trip was a success, so far. No sign of any sentries.”

A sigh of relief from the other end. “Wonderful. Can you give us a visual?”

“I’m heading for the inner ship, gonna look and see if I can find the holding cells, but by that time I’m not sure if the cloaking box will be able to hold off the surveillance tech they’ve got going on.”

There was only so much the cloaking box could do – the cloaking box they were using to interfere with Galra tracking equipment effectively rendered a body invisible to Galra monitors for a solid two hours. But after that, the wearer was exposed. Shiro was on crunch time to find Lance. And then figure a way to get him out, on top of everything else.

Flexing the fingers of his metal arm, Shiro took a deep breath.

Honestly, he hated being here. He hated the memories this place brought back, however fleeting.

 

This was where he’d been given the new arm in the first place.

He had been experimented on in here. He’d fought in here. He rarely talked about it, but the whole team knew. Even if they didn’t hear the whole story. Hell, _Shiro_ didn’t even know the whole story.

But he had the memory of pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before. A faint recollection of waking up on a cruiser, getting the hell out of there a year after being brought to the Galra by a fleet of soldiers, after trying to fight them off singlehandedly. He and his tiny crew of researchers had been captured.

It was team Voltron who had rescued him, and since he had nowhere else to go, with no family to speak of and no home on earth, he took to the team like gum to a shoe. And the little team had quickly accepted him as their leader.

The guilt of knowing the others were still back with those Galra kept him awake, most nights. But he carried on. He had no choice.

 

He clenched his arm, the mechanized one, Galra-manufactured and a constant reminder of things he never wanted to think about, all the things he had done. He shoved it all to the back of his mind for now, and carried on through the corridors of the Galra ship, passing a control room guarded by four sentries who were too busy chatting with each other to spot him slinking around the corner, various doors all closed off from prying eyes, and towards a door at the end of a narrower corridor. The door that his cuff screen was telling him to open led into a room no bigger than a broom closet.

The screen on his suit blinked, telling him there was an exit nearby, somewhere by his feet. He bent down and felt around, until his fingers grasped along the edges of a trapdoor.

He gently unlatched the door and lifted it—to reveal a ladder with rungs so thin he feared they might give out under his weight.

 

They didn’t, thank god.

The Galra were many horrible things, but they were also skilled engineers. The ladder held.

Hopping down into the lower level of the ship, Shiro took a few ticks to let his eyes adjust to the light. Everything was dim, tinged purple, and when he listened carefully, he noticed how quiet it sounded. It was _way_ too quiet down here.

Cautiously, Shiro reached out a hand to brush against the wall, and guided himself down the north end of the ship’s second-to-lowest level. When he turned the corner, it was relief that flooded every bit of him.

The cell block. He’d found it. Lance must be here somewhere.

Lining the walls on either side of him were prison cells separated by clear glass panels, and surprisingly enough, most were empty. Odd.

He looked to his right: Yes, that cell contained a prisoner. It was too dark to see, but Shiro saw enough to know that the prisoner was small, very quiet, and not moving.

“Shiro,” Pidge’s voice was back online, all while the sound of Allura arguing furiously for control of the comms melted into the background. “Find anything?”

“Yeah,” said Shiro, looking around. “I think I found the cell block. But I don’t see Lance.”

“Give us a visual.”

“Sure thing,” he said. He took in his distance from the end of the corridor, did a quick scan around to double check he’d counted the number of cells, and then nodded to himself. “All right, I’m ninety degrees to – _ah_!”

 

The next thing he knew, Shiro was being slammed to the ground.

“Shiro?” Pidge asked. When Shiro didn’t answer, she tried again. “Shiro, you there? Come in Purple, come in, Purple,” her voice echoed frantically over the comms, but Shiro’s helmet was already out of reach, too far to hear anything.

“Pidge, Coran, Allura,” he shouted, pushing his arms out beneath him to get up. But someone knocked him back down.

The speakers in his comms unit crackled faintly.

 

On the other end, Pidge anxiously pushed up her glasses, which were already slipping from the sweat that had gathered there. “Shiro, you’re cutting out,” she said, raising her voice. Behind her, Coran and Hunk exchanged nervous glances, while Allura stood just next to Pidge, listening in on everything with a tight expression. Pidge turned her head to the others in the room. "I can't reach him."

“I can’t hear him either,” Allura said, motioning for Pidge to move so that she could tinker with the equipment herself. There wasn’t much they could fix on their end. Much like the incident with Lance, it was Shiro’s comms that were busted, not Voltron’s.

 

“Abort extraction,” Shiro groaned, before someone kicked him, rolling him onto his back.

Battle instincts triggered, Shiro scrambled against the floor for purchase, kicking out with one leg when someone tried to grab his ankle. The helmet-covered faces of two more sentries entered his vision. One of them was holding something that looked like a very small gun with a syringe attached to the barrel.

His breathing stilled.

A tranquilizer gun. No, not again. Not…

He kicked away another sentry’s hand and rolled over, dragging himself a fraction closer to the helmet and repeating, “Abort extraction, abort--”

_No._

He was only able to get one more word out before the Galra sentries buckled down to haul him up like a ragdoll.

Then he heard the crunch of metal, and turned his head just in time to see his equipment, comms unit and all, being crushed under the heavy foot of a Galra soldier—no, not soldier. Commander.

Sendak.

The stuff of nightmares, and he was right there, grinning down at Shiro while Shiro continued in his fruitless efforts to break free of the sentries.

“So,” Sendak purred, giving Shiro an appraising look, “our prize warrior has returned. Welcome back, Champion.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Lance woke again not to the sound of crying, but to the sound of someone yelling. It sounded like a man's voice.

He recognized that voice…  but why did it sound so familiar?

The sound was getting closer. Sitting up in his cot, Lance leaned against the wall and pushed himself up off the floor, before blinking away the last remnants of sleep and hurrying over to the partition to peer out.

He’d anticipated another prisoner, maybe. Or a quarrel between the sentries. But he was not prepared for what he saw outside, just down at the end of the corridor.

It couldn’t be, this couldn’t… _no, he was having a nightmare. He wouldn’t get captured._

_Shiro never got captured._

No doubt about it, it was definitely Shiro. He was the one shouting - and not only that, but he was fighting with all he had to break the grip of the Galra sentries. Ice flooded Lance’s veins as soon as he caught sight of Commander Sendak, grinning at the very same sight that left Lance feeling like he might vomit.

“ _Shiro!_ ” Lance shouted, banging a fist on the glass before he could stop himself.

 

_Zzzap!_

 

Lance bit out a sharp gasp when the wall shocked him, sending him backwards onto his dairy air. Shaking it off with a newfound surge of adrenaline, Lance staggered back to the partition and tried to get a better look at Shiro, who was being led in the opposite direction of Lance’s cell. Lance pressed his nose and forehead against the glass, gently enough that he didn’t get another zap.

Not Shiro. They couldn’t have gotten Shiro _._

It was him, though. The black Paladin and team leader of Voltron. Captured.

"Shiro!" Lance shouted again, pressing his hands harder against the glass, desperately willing the partition to just slide down, just let him out, _let him out._

Shiro’s head whirled around at the sound of Lance's shout as he was hauled roughly down the corridor by the guards, and his eyes flew wide when he caught sight of his teammate.

“Lance!” he called back down, before the sentry to his left shoved him. Hard.

Shiro’s knees buckled, nearly giving out before the two Galrans recommenced pulling him along, practically dragging him by the shoulders. Shiro caught the horrified expression on Lance’s face, and croaked out, “Lance, don’t you _dare_.”

Lance could hear the unspoken second half of the sentence.  _Don't you dare lose your cool in front of them. Don't you dare give them a reason to hurt you, too. Don't you dare give up._

Lance pressed a hand to the glass and shook his head, nonplussed. It couldn’t… no. Was this really happening?

Shiro grit his teeth and called down to Lance over his shoulder, “We’ll get out of this. We’ll both—augh!” the other Galra, armed to the teeth, jabbed him in the side with one of those electric cattle prods. But it didn’t stop Shiro, before he rounded the corner with the guards, from adding, “We’ll find a way, Lance. They’re not keeping us this ti—” Another shove. His words caught in his throat.

Then they were around the corner, and Shiro was gone.

Lance stumbled away from the glass and landed on the cold floor next to his cot, breathing hard. _They had Shiro._

He’d probably been on his way to rescue Lance, too. This… was all Lance’s fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh the feedback in general for this fic has been super duper sweet, thank you guys! And I really love the speculations I see going on about the plot (all will be revealed in time). Stuff like that really makes my day. Thanks again for reading!


	5. Electric Avenue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, it's been too long (nah it's only been four days. But it _feels_ like longer)

 

 

Pidge could only identify one more word, before the comms unit cut out completely:

 

“ _Captured.”_

*****

**()0()**

*****

Lance was only given a few minutes to process Shiro’s unexpected arrival, before another squad of three Galra sentries showed up to his cell, opening the partition with a _swish_ before coming in without an invitation.

Lance kicked and struggled and threw as many punches as he could get in (fat lot of good that did) until he was nearly out of energy. The adrenaline rush was now running low, and the pain in his shoulder had returned.

The sentries were taking him whether he liked it or not. He fought tooth and nail all the way.

He was taken down the corridor and led through a winding route that took him and the three sentries up to a higher level of the ship, past even more prison cells, more Galra sentries, the odd General or two, and finally up to a deck three levels above Lance’s cell block.

As they rounded a final corner, Lance was greeted with another unwelcome face.

“Hello, Paladin,” the soldier at the end of the hall crooned, unsmiling when Lance was pushed forward, towards the Galran soldier waiting for him. “Step into my office.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

The furnishings in the room were sparse: A screen on the wall in one corner, showing any activity outside the chamber; a table of sorts, paper-thin and supported on spindly legs like an enormous spider; and last but not least, a chair. Just a plain metal chair, probably aluminum or some variation thereof, nothing interesting about it.

Except for the fact that it was bolted to the floor.  

 

“You know who I am, I’m sure.”

Of course Lance knew who this guy was.

Lance’s sniper files had an endless list of wanted criminals in the known universe, providing names of soon-to-be marks and currently-being-hunted targets—and towards the top of this list, just beneath Commander Sendak, was the man standing in front of Lance with a look to rival a deadly viper’s.

This was Haxus, a ruthless soldier of the highest squadron in the Galra empire, and a pawn for Commander Sendak to do with as he pleased. All the same, he was very dangerous. And very slippery.

 

“The other Paladin has been captured, as you already know.”

“He won’t talk,” Lance spat, “And neither will I.” The metal hands of the sentries dug their fingers a little harder into his shoulders, but he ignored it.

“Oh, we already know that _he_ won’t talk,” Haxus reassured, striding over to the door. Then he turned to the two sentries holding Lance, giving a small nod.

The sentries released their grip on Lance’s arms, and Lance immediately pulled away, backing up as far as he could go before he was up against the furthest wall, falling back into his sniper’s habits. Slow the heart rate. Quiet breaths. Sure feet. The enemy was at your mercy.

Only, Lance didn’t have his Bayard with him, and this time, _he_ was the one at the enemy’s mercy. He had nowhere to hide.

 

After watching the sentries leave, Haxus tapped a finger to the keypad on the screen programmed into the wall, and the door shut. Lance heard a faint noise like a scanning beam, and he knew that the door was sealed tight.

No getting out of this one.

“The other Paladin, our old Champion, will be fighting in the arena for entertainment,” Haxus explained, turning back to eye Lance condescendingly. “If all goes well within the inner circles of his Excellency Lord Zarkon, we might use your friend for a very important experiment.”

“What experiment?” Lance asked before he could stop himself. Stupid mouth, letting stupid words escape when he didn’t want them to.

The soldier’s head tilted to the side like a curious, hungry predator. “It depends—on whether or not your friend lives through it.”

Lance snarled and just barely refrained from throwing himself at the soldier, the filthy, worthless purple scum standing in front of him like he was invincible. Like he couldn’t be touched. Haxus was a snake **;**  A silver-tongued snake. But Lance was not going to let this man talk circles around him. He was _not_ going to let anyone get inside his head, not today.

“I’m not playing games, Haxus,” Lance growled, keeping his distance as he remained against the wall on the opposite side of the room.

“No games,” said Haxus, “None of your contrived, human games, anyway. I, on the other hand, have something very entertaining in store for you. Now that the only person standing between you and me has taken leave for a few hours...”

Lance swallowed. “What do you mean?” he asked, keeping his voice steady.

“Like you don’t know,” Haxus sneered. Lance’s brow pinched. If Haxus could roll his eyes, Lance knew that the man would probably be doing it right about now. “Your dear friend, the halfling prince, seems to have acquired a special… how do you say, ‘soft spot’ for you. A _human_.” His pale purple lips curled in disgust.

Lance gritted his teeth, hands clenching at his sides as he tried to ignore the claim that Haxus was making. It was just a game these Galra were playing.

The prince— _Keith—_ did not have a soft spot for him. That man was just another Galra who had tried to mess with Lance’s head. He’d done a good job of it, too, because Keith was really one of the few things Lance had been able to think about for the past twenty-four hours.

Man, he was really hung up on this guy. Was it possible to loathe someone and be interested in them at the same time?

And Keith was the _enemy._ These were mind games, nothing more. The idiot prince was just another guy who’d done a bang up job of fucking Lance over, in a psychological sense.

“He’s refused to permit anyone besides himself to interrogate you,” Haxus continued to muse as he paced back and forth, only a couple yards from where Lance stood, statue-still. “Some have told me it’s because he doesn’t want others interfering with his ‘unusual’ methods. I, on the other hand, wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment.”

 “So you mean to say,” Lance began, “that if your prince hears you’ve been questioning me, you’ll be in some serious trouble for disobeying direct orders.”

“I’m sure whatever information you have to offer far outweighs the consequences of disobeying a _youngling’s_ orders,” Haxus assured. With a self-confident shrug, the soldier watched as Lance kept away like a frightened bird, ready to take flight. And Haxus was the weasel, waiting for just the right time to snap his jaws, ripping its prey to shreds. “I have every right to tease out whatever information it is I need from you. After all,” he said, a thoughtful finger tapping at his chin, “it’s all for the good of the Empire.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Lance. As an afterthought, he boldly added, “And uh, I’m gonna have to call bullshit on this whole ‘for the good of the Empire’ crap. You’re doing this to help yourself, not the Galra.”

“Is that so?” Haxus asked. He raised a thin eyebrow, and his yellow eyes narrowed to slits as they turned on Lance.

Lance scoffed. “You wouldn’t really risk your reputation when you’ve got Galra royalty practically up your ass aboutinterfering. Exactly like you’re doing now.”

Haxus smiled then, one of those twisted smiles that reminded Lance of the cartoon Christmas movie about the Grinch, and then the soldier was sidling calmly across the floor, passing the only chair in the room, and the only thing separating the two of them.

He stopped just short of Lance, who had nowhere to go, backed up against the wall.

The Galran leaned forward, getting right in Lance’s face, and his thin gash of a mouth curled upwards in a grin that gave Lance the jitters. “Of course I wouldn’t, would I?”

“No,” Lance said, making eye contact and not letting the matter drop. “You wouldn’t. The prince won’t let you.”

“Ahh, but you see,” Haxus’s lips curled even further upwards as he wagged a finger in the air, “your prince isn’t here.”

That was when Lance’s confidence plummeted to almost nothing. Swallowing, he kept his voice even when he answered firmly, “You still wouldn’t.”

“We’ll see.” Haxus rolled his shoulders and clasped his hands behind his back, in true military fashion, and took a few steps back to allow Lance some personal space. His head twitched in the direction of the singular chair, set right in the middle of the chamber. Lance was clearly meant to have a seat.

To be honest, he’d really prefer to stand.

“Please, sit,” said Haxus. “We might be here for a while.”

It was just a plain old chair, normal enough if Lance ignored the way it was bolted to the floor. When Lance hesitated, Haxus’s sneer turned into an ugly frown.

“ _Sit_ ,” he ordered.

Lance flinched, but he steeled himself, stepped around the other way to avoid Haxus, and took a seat.

The second he did, his wrists and ankles were cuffed with bright, glowing blue wires.

“H-hey!” Lance sputtered, watching the wires spark where they touched the chair. “What is this?”

Of course he wasn’t going to get off that easy. What Galra just offered someone a seat without a catch?

Lance jerked one foot experimentally to the side, and had to bite his lip just to stop himself from yelping as the glowing wire bit into his ankle like he’d been stung by a small swarm of wasps. He angled his foot away and decided it was better not to move at all.

So much for no games.

This was going to be a _lot_ like a game - Operation, to be specific. A really, really sick edition of Operation.

“Now you understand what sort of playing field we’re on,” Haxus said smoothly, with a nod to the wires sparking around Lance’s ankles. Lance glowered. “Careful, Paladin, I could do much worse if you continue to act out.”

Lance set his jaw, refusing to turn his gaze away. But he did cool it with the glaring, if only because he did have _some_ instinct for self-preservation. Sometimes.

“Sendak didn’t see a Voltron Paladin as worthy enough to speak to him face to face. So he sent me to deal with you.”

“Oh?” Lance asked, “So he decided I wasn’t worth _his_ time, but you’re low enough on the food chain that I’m worth _yours_?”

“You will shut that quick mouth of yours if you ever want to see another day.”

Although Lance wanted nothing more than to lash out with his good arm and punch this purple dickbag in the face, he knew that any sudden moves would earn him another shock from the electric restraints.

As long as he kept still, Lance thought that he was at least safe from any physical pain. He only had the sound of Haxus’s oily voice oozing through his ears to worry about.

But to Lance’s horror, Haxus reached down towards the belt encircling his armored waist, then drew his hand back with something in it.

The thing was small and very thin, shiny like chrome, and on one side it had just two buttons, one red, one black.

“You will tell me where Voltron keeps their headquarters,” Haxus raised the sleek, compact device, and hovered one purple finger dangerously close to the red button. “Or I will push this button. As many times as I have to, just so we’re clear. Something tells me you prefer your nervous system… undisrupted.”

Lance swallowed.

“This could all be relatively painless, but… it’s up to you.”

Something about the serene smirk plastered on Haxus’s face made Lance want to call this guy’s bluff. So he did. “You wouldn’t hurt a favorite of your precious prince, no matter how many years you have on him,” Lance said. It was a ballsy move, but he didn’t back down on his gaze. Haxus made no move to press the button, just as he suspected. As long as he was in the prince's "favor," Lance couldn't be touched. At least, he hoped that was the case. It was enough to bolster his confidence, at least.

This time, it was Lance who smirked. “Not as scary as you look, huh buddy?” he challenged, quirking his head.

Too ballsy. Way too ballsy.

“First question, where is—”

“Nah,” Lance interrupted before he could stop himself, “Hu-um, are you _serious_? Like I’d ever tell _you_ where Voltron is. Next question.”

“That's interesting, I thought I heard you say ' _next question_.' Am I wrong, or did I just hear that?” Haxus's yellow eyes were wide with barely-restrained fury. The question was dangerously soft. He looked downright flummoxed.

Interrupted by a prisoner? By a _child?_

Lance didn’t miss the change in his tone. But he was on a roll now. “Yeah, ya heard right. I said, you’re not as scary as you look, and I’m not answering your question. Geez, no _wonder_ you’re not a commander.” Lance grinned smugly despite himself, and tacked on for good measure, “You just… wouldn’t cut it.”

“I will teach you manners, _Paladin,”_ Haxus spat, and this time, there was no hesitation when his thumb came down on the red button.

 

Lance could never have imagined what dying felt like, up until now.

With his mouth wide open in a silent scream, Lance’s entire body arched with the excruciating force of a hundred volts of electricity surging through him. His nerves felt like they were being seared, his lungs felt like they were crackling and shredding like paper in fire. Lance couldn’t breathe.

And then it stopped.

When his breath returned, the sound of faint laughter reached his ears.

Lance’s head fell backwards against the back of chair as he gasped for air, keeping the rest of his body tensed for fear that a hand might drift wayward and receive another zap. The laughter grew louder.

“Will you speak out against me again?”

Lance, wisely, shut his mouth. And he kept it shut _real fucking tight_.

His limbs ached, his ears thudded with the sound of rushing blood, and his tensed-up muscles whined a plaintive protest.

Haxus’s nostrils flared, and the oily grin returned. “Better,” he said. “Now…” his voice melted into a soft purr, malice and amusement and unadulterated evil seeping into every word. “Are you ready to tell me where Voltron is?”

Lance said nothing.

Haxus nodded, like he had expected as much. “The hard way, then.”

Lance would not give his team away. Not even under torture.

So he continued to say nothing. No matter the consequences, Lance couldn’t bring himself to oust Voltron to the enemy.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t also scream. And Lance certainly screamed.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Haxus asked every question about Voltron under the sun, and then some. Lance didn’t talk.

Lance _hurt._

_The team needs you to protect them. Shiro is already a prisoner. Fucking hell, Lance._

Lance was too tired to reign in the angry, invasive thoughts that blocked out anything and everything else. But it was better to focus on the painful thoughts than the painful everything else.

Lance hurt and he hurt badly, but no way in hell was he talking. Haxus pressed the red button again. And again.

Question.

Silence.

Button.

“ _Ga-ahh!_ ” Lance groaned, gritting his teeth as the next wave of electricity surged through him, tearing through his veins like wildfire and gnawing at his insides, burning him, deafening him, blinding him.

In reality, there was nothing wrong with his sight or his hearing. But it hurt so much that it _felt_ like everything was wrong with him, it didn’t matter how internal the pain was. And even if he wasn't actually being blinded like he felt, he had no doubt that the shocks would leave some damage.

This method of torture was psychological as well as physical. Every time Haxus pressed the button, Lance howled, and the soldier laughed. It was enough to make any sane person’s stomach roil.

Question.

Silence.

Button.

And again, and again. _Answer the question. Tell me where Voltron is hiding. Where are the last Alteans. Who sent you to kill the prince. This could all be over so easily, but it's all up to you. This is no one’s fault but your own._

Lance shook his head to all questions, even when the pain became so bad that he just wanted to die. He just wanted to lie back against the chair and fall asleep forever. He wished it was that easy. It was never that easy.

“Either way, Paladin, your friends will suffer. Sooner or later. And all of this,” Haxus motioned towards Lance, slumped against the chair as he disregarded the small zaps and sparks around his wrists and ankles, already in too much agony to notice, “all of this will be in vain. It would be so much easier if you answered me now.” His tone took on something more soothing, and at the same time, mocking. “Why don’t you?”

Lance pushed himself to keep his eyes open. “Because,” he bit out, fighting a wave of nausea that threatened to send his last, disgusting prison meal back up. Aftershocks from the high-voltage wires still vibrated through his limbs. “Because when my team finds me, they’re going to kick your purple ass so hard you’ll be tasting Paladin boots for a month.”

“Why you little…” Haxus hissed like a viper, and raised his hand high. His finger hovered over the button.

Not the red one. The black one.

Lance didn’t need to see a label to know what this button was for.

Bracing himself, Lance took a deep breath and made the decision that, no matter what, he was not going to spill any of Voltron’s secrets. If it meant having to die to protect the ones he cared about, then… well.

Fuck it.

He’d die for his team in a heartbeat.

The finger over the black button lowered, slowly, until it rested right on top, so gently Lance thought it was a little anticlimactic for the situation.

“ 'M not talking,” Lance slurred from his seat, letting his eyes finally fall shut. “Do it.”

He heard Haxus sneer.

“Since you asked so nicely,” the Galra said. Breathing deeply, Lance sent out a silent prayer to the universe as he prepared himself for the inevitable.

 _Padre nuestro,_ he said, deep within the comfort of his own thoughts, _que_ _estás_   _en el cielo…_

 

A _swish_ from the door, and then another voice was added to the mix.

“What is going on here?” the voice asked.

Lance’s eyes flew wide open. That wasn’t Haxus.

It was… Keith?

Lance’s gaze caught Haxus’s finger freeze over the button at the sound of their new arrival.

“Ahh, his highness himself.” Haxus’s hand quickly swung back to his side, bringing the little remote control with it.

It wasn’t like Keith hadn’t seen it, but it was certainly an admirable effort.

And by admirable, Lance thought, it was pretty damn pathetic. Hiding this one from the prince was going to take a lot more brains and a lot less of an inflated ego. After all, what was a soldier to a Master Sergeant? To a _prince?_ Keith had more than twice the rank that Haxus had.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Keith asked, and it was only too clear that he looked… for lack of a better word, _pissed._ “I went to check on the sniper a few minutes ago, and wouldn’t you guess? He wasn’t there,” the prince said, calm. Too calm. Dangerously calm.

A chill ran down Lance’s spine, and he was only fifty percent sure it had to do with the lingering electricity in the chair. “I discovered the cell empty. My first hunch, of course, told me it had something to do with you.”

“Your hunch was correct… your highness,” Haxus simpered, trying to play it off when he slipped the sleek little device into a compartment in his belt. Lance’s eyes followed the movement. He didn’t doubt Keith had seen it, too.

“This is where you’ve brought him? For interrogation? I could have you tried for treason.”

“Your highness—”

“That’s Sergeant to you.”

Haxus bowed then, and there was no way he could have made it any more derisive than he did, all pomp and no circumstance. “It was all for the good of the Empire. I was hoping you would return soon, of course, so that I could have your additional input.”

Keith said nothing.

“Forgive me for asking, but I assume you’ve taken good care of the prisoners?” Haxus’s tone was light. Baiting. No one in the room missed the scowl flash across Keith’s face, before his expression was schooled again.

“I assume that’s none of your business,” Keith responded, his voice just as bitingly saccharine.

Haxus’s smile looked so fake and so forced that Lance might have cringed, even if he hadn’t been suffering the aftermath of multiple electric shocks.

Was his heartbeat supposed to feel like that?

“Forgive me, _Sergeant,_ but Commander Sendak has been asking about the last group of ailing prisoners. I told him you were doing your duty well, as you always do.”

“Appreciated, I’m sure,” Keith growled. The Galra ears had flattened towards the back of the head, not a lot but enough to be noticeable. Yellow eyes narrowed to slits.

“It is so much more efficient to move them elsewhere than to deal with their rotting corpses in the cells.”

Keith nodded stiffly as an affirmative.

Lance got the message right away. What Keith had been doing while he was gone…

That prisoner from earlier. The empty cells. _Sick prisoners._

_Left for dead._

 

“You…” Lance murmured, grabbing the attention of both the soldier and the Sergeant. He made direct eye contact with Keith before he said his next words, “…Are an absolute piece of _shit_.”

**_Zzzapppp!_ **

Lance saw white.

It was the red button—Lance only knew this because he was still alive.

When he returned to reality, gasping for air, it was to see Haxus was sneering back at him from the prince's side. “You will not address the prince in that way.”

As if this guy actually cared about his beloved prince.

Keith stared, processing. He blinked, looking from Lance, to Haxus, to Lance again. His expression was painfully transparent for all of two seconds, though only Lance was able to see. Maybe it was the aftershocks talking, but Lance could swear he caught the barest trace of worry there.

“What...” Keith's focus turned back to Haxus and away from Lance, who was breathing hard in the chair with his eyes screwed shut. “You- You use that device again, and I will personally see to it that _not only_  are you demoted to nothing," came the growled threat, "but discharged from Zarkon’s service entirely.”

In the last couple of days that Lance had seen Keith, however briefly, he had never seen him look so angry. The anger appeared controlled, but the guy was clearly about to snap. And whatever it was that made him seem so terrifying all of a sudden, it had even Haxus looking hesitant to disobey orders again.

“I will escort him back to his cell," said Keith. "You are not to have any sort of contact with this prisoner again. Am I clear?”

"...Crystal, sir."

The next thing Lance knew, his wrists and ankles were free of the wires, and two sentries that he hadn’t seen enter the room were pulling him up by the shoulders. They were leaving.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Two more sentries were requested to assist Keith in escorting Lance back to his cell.

It wasn’t because they assumed Lance would try to make a run for it, oh, no. It was just that Lance couldn’t exactly walk on his own for more than a few seconds without collapsing to the ground.

 

Keith viciously typed in the code to the cell door when they finally made it to the lower levels, dismissed the sentries a little too harshly, and pushed Lance into the cell the minute the door was down.

Lance staggered, before a pair of armoured arms caught him from behind, pushing him upright as Keith led him across the room, all the way past the cot until they were backed up to the very back wall. It was a lot like their first confrontation, actually.

When there was no more floor to cover, Keith let go. Lance braced himself against the wall and slid to the ground, too exhausted and in pain to get back up.

“Are you all right?” Keith asked, closing the distance between them to kneel on the floor in front Lance.

He sounded so _scared,_ all of a sudden. Intense. A different kind of intense from how he’d been only minutes ago, talking to Haxus, when his very presence screamed ‘military.’

It confused Lance way too much, and he was already disoriented enough.

"I'll survive," Lance responded, tired, letting his eyes flutter shut for a moment. He tried to breathe. His lungs still burned, and his ribs ached. Everything ached, actually.

Why did Keith have to be so freaking confusing? Honestly, this guy could be one of those pendulums you saw in old grandfather clocks, he just kept going back and forth between personalities. Worried about a prisoner one minute, placid and unfeeling the next, and then back to concerned? Lance wasn’t sure if the man actually cared, or if he just needed to go on meds for the wacky mood swings.

“You’re such an idiot, _why_ would you bait Haxus like that?” Keith asked as soon as the partition shut behind the two of them. He wasn’t leaving. He shook his head as incredulity twisted his expression. “The man literally goes out of his way to twist arms. He _lives_ to watch people squirm. Dammit Lance, what were you _thinking?”_

“Well it’s not like I _asked_ to be brought there, you know,” Lance murmured, finding the strength to at least open his eyes again. “Not that you’d… hey.” Lance realized something just then.

That was the first time he’d heard Keith use his name.

Lance shook his head, clearing his thoughts. No, now was _not_ the time. “I was protecting my friends,” he muttered, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. ‘S not like _you’ve_ got any friends to care about.”

“I—of course I do!” Keith protested, and suddenly he seemed more real to Lance, arguing over something so petty even when the situation at hand was anything but. “I mean, I don’t _need_ friends. But I’ve got… you know what? Whatever. That’s none of your business anyway.”

“Okay, whatever you say Sergeant Emo."

"...What did you call me?"

Lance wasn't sure whether to laugh or to go to sleep and leave this problem to deal with later. "You’re actually the weirdest Galra I’ve ever met,” Lance murmured, taking comfort in the way the wall felt nice and cool at his back, through the thin layers of his prisoner's uniform. “No offense or anything.”

“And you’re a really overconfident prick. No offense or anything,” Keith muttered. Despite the harsh words, there was very little heat to them. Then he switched positions, from kneeling to sitting, cross-legged in front of Lance, who had both knees drawn up to his chest. The sight of a Galra soldier sitting cross-legged like an eager little kid would have been laughable, under normal circumstances. But for some reason- maybe it was the look of total urgency on Keith's face- Lance didn't feel like laughing. When Keith's voice lowered to a whisper, Lance grew even more perplexed.

But Keith shook his head and explained quietly, “All the cells down here are under constant surveillance.” He gestured with one gloved had up to the ceiling. Lance didn’t see anything, but he’d take the man’s word for it. There must be monitors hidden all over this room.

Just the thought made Lance feel even worse. Not that he’d done or said anything important while being held here, but the thought of being watched? Nope. That creeped him the fuck out.

“This corner of the cell is the only blind spot,” Keith whispered, “They can see me, but they can’t see you as long as you’re right against this wall.”

“For real?” Lance asked, suddenly alert and curious.

“Shh!” Keith held up a hand. “Keep your voice down,” he hissed. “Unless you _want_ them to overhear.”

“Overhear  _what?”_

“What did I just say?” the Galra asked impatiently, throwing an exasperated hand in the air, which, by itself, was very comical to Lance. A Galra, acting so _human._ “Lower your _voice_.”

“All right, all right,” Lance raised a reassuring hand as he did what Keith ordered. “Geez.”

“I can’t do much just yet. But I wanted to tell you that I’m _not_ the bad guy here, Lance. I’m getting you out.”

“You’re…” Lance blinked. "Um, you're what?" Was he asleep? Was he still back in the interrogation chamber, unconscious? Because there was no way in hell this could be real.

“I’m getting you out of here,” Keith said again, so quietly Lance almost thought it might be his imagination.

"I-I can’t leave without my teammate," was the only thing Lance could think to say.

Keith’s face fell. “Your teammate?”

“He’s here—he was captured… about an hour ago, I think.” Lance fought the growing urge to seize up and say nothing more. “Shiro.”

“The purple Paladin. I heard,” Keith said, nodding slowly.

“So you saw him?” Lance turned a careful eye on the Galra.

Keith shook his head. “I just said I _heard.”_

“What exactly did you hear? What are they going to do to him? He’s not going to talk, Ke—” Lance caught himself before he could make the mistake of calling a Galra Sergeant (not to mention a prince) by his first name. God only knew what this guy might do to Lance if he ticked him off. Keith raised an eyebrow, but apparently he decided the almost-slip-up wasn’t worth pointing out. Lance tried again. “He’s not gonna say anything about Voltron.”

“They know that,” Keith answered darkly, “but from what I know, the Galra have dealt with him before. The exact words that I overheard were, ‘The Champion has returned.’"

"Champion?" It rang a bell for Lance, but Shiro hadn't talked about his past with the Galra in... well,  _years._

"If I’m not mistaken, he’s going to be sent to fight in the arena.”

The flying fudge if Lance knew what the arena was, but it didn’t sound good. “What’ll happen to him if he doesn’t fight?” he asked.

“It’s not a question of _if,”_ Keith muttered. He turned his head to look up at the ceiling, before deciding all was clear. “It’s just a question of _when._ They’ll put him through hell and worse, you can bet on that.”

“And what did they mean by ‘Champion?’” Lance asked, hearing his own voice grow even softer still.

“I’ll… tell you another time.” Keith ignored Lance’s stubborn frown. “Now doesn’t seem like the best moment... Also, if you want my opinion—”

“I really don’t.”

“You’re not exactly looking your best right now,” Keith pointed out anyway.

“S’cause I didn’t get my eight hours of beauty sleep, thanks to you.” Lance finally remembered where Keith had disappeared to in the first place, and this time, his lip curled as he gave the Galran the most disgusted look he could muster through the lingering aftershocks of Haxus’s ‘interrogation methods.’

He wanted to fall asleep and never wake up, he really did. But then, he’d never have a chance to see his friends again. His family. But now was not the time to be thinking like that.

“You were taking prisoners away. You were taking them away to die,” he hissed, weakly trying to brush away Keith’s hand that had, at some point, reached out to grip tightly around his shoulder. “You Galra are _sick,”_ he shook his head, disbelieving. “You almost had me for a second, believing you were better than them. That you were actually _good_ , deep down. But you… you… _ugh_!” He raised an arm to bat away Keith’s other hand, which was pressed flat against his chest, and ignored the broken look Keith gave him. “You take _dying prisoners_ away to _rot_ in space!”

“I don’t.”

“The _fuck_ you don’t—”

“No, Lance,”

Lance’s next breath was sharp in his throat.

“I don’t.” Keith lowered his voice even more as he leaned in, so close that his lips just about ghosted over the shell of Lance's ear. He was so quiet that Lance had to strain to hear him. Whatever Keith wanted to tell him, it wasn't worth the risk of allowing a monitor to pick it up. “The prisoners weren't dying," he whispered. "Sick, yes, but not dying. Those people are alive and free."

“…What?”


	6. But I'm Not Even Wearing Socks?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really like socks? I will never have enough of them. Lance shares my pain.

“The prisoners are alive?”

Keith leaned back to give Lance a little personal space. His expression was a cross between restless and determined. And a little bit miserable.

Disturbed, definitely, and when Lance looked closer, there was real fear in the soldier’s eyes. Aureate, bright, and possessing way too much emotion to belong to one of the Galra, even though the eyes themselves were Galran at first glance.

“Why… should I believe you?” Lance whispered. He gave his head a weak tilt, leaning to eye the large, patchy ears that somehow didn’t detract from the rest of the Galra’s appearance. “Why _would_ I believe you?”

That had Keith stumped, apparently. Good question, but would the answer be a truth, or a lie fed to Lance like another one of the Galra’s mind games?

The answer was neither encouraging, nor was it entirely flattering on Keith in Lance’s eyes. But it was the most honest-sounding answer Lance could have hoped for.

“I don’t know.” 

Lance had to swallow his pride, in that moment, and admit to himself that this one, _this_ Galran, he was different. He couldn't afford to second guess it now; Keith was different. Even if he’d been full Galra, Keith was _still_ different. Lance stared into eyes that belonged to the Galra and saw substance, compassion, and a fervor that belonged to a human. And it begged the question **:** what the hell was Keith doing on a Galra warship?

Maybe Lance was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe what distanced Keith from the rest of his kind was how, even though he _was_ Galra, he went against the way things were. How they had always been for their race.

“I can’t tell you all that much,” Keith ran a jittery hand through his dark hair while he continued to whisper, trying to explain without giving too much away. “Some of the prisoners are actually dangerous—those are the ones we have to keep sedated. But the rest of them? They were declared unfit to fight in the arena, and taken to working camps." Lance saw a muscle working in Keith's jaw, and quickly looked away when Keith caught him staring. "The working camps are bad," Keith continued, "but they’re cake compared to fighting.” His expression fell even more dispirited. “The ones who get sick are sent to holding cells down in this cell block.”

“And they don’t receive any sort of medical treatment,” Lance guessed.

Keith’s head dipped in shame. Lance knew it wasn’t his fault – not necessarily – but it infuriated him just the same. It was disgusting and heinous, what the Galra did to scores of innocent people. “They’re sent down to a separate cell block, in case they get better. If they don’t…”

“They’re sent off death row. This…” Lance realized aloud, “this is death row.”

“As few of them die as I possible, if I can help it,” Keith insisted quietly.

He looked tired. The thing was, Lance knew exactly what tired felt like—and it wasn’t the kind of tired that a few hours of extra sleep could fix. Keith looked the sort of tired that forced young children to grow up too early, made adults out of teenagers and threw those teenagers into the tumult that was a constant war.

Lance hadn’t grown up in war, but he’d been thrown into it at an early age.

 

Fifteen years old, sent off to boot camp.

Make the family proud. Earn your place in the world.

Sixteen, and already excelling in his classes at the garrison. _A fighter pilot, mama,_ he wrote home, _I actually got into the fighter pilot program._

And then ignored by the Administrative Center of the Galaxy Alliance, naturally. THat was when he saw the ACGA for what they were: a bunch of pretentious assholes who were blind to real skill, and focused more on family legacies and their own pride. It was when he realized what some kids meant, when they raised a finger and muttered the words, _fuck the garrison._

 _Then_ , the Galra pod with one of the lost members from the Kerberos mission—Shiro— crash-landed a mile away from the garrison; Lance, Pidge, and Hunk had intervened to save him before the feds could take him and extract information that the government didn’t need to know just yet-- didn’t _deserve_ to know anyway. The four of them had escaped—but not before Lance nicked one of the stun-guns and sniped every single one of the doctors holding Shiro captive in the pod he’d arrived in.

Lance hadn’t killed anyone, but he’d shivered at the thought of how it might have turned out, at the time, had the gun been loaded with real ammo, instead of tranquilizers. The doctors at the garrison were dicks, but they didn't deserve to die. 

His integrity was what distanced him from other assassins in the field. There were plenty of other hitmen out there, but there was only one sniper deemed good enough for Voltron.

The rest was history. Lance, Pidge, and Hunk were tracked down by an extraterrestrial organization that no one on earth had ever heard of before— Not because it was top-secret (although, it really was), but because the organization had gone dormant for thousands of years. Voltron was ancient; the team’s cruisers had been around while hundreds of civilizations on earth rose and fell.

With the arrival of Shiro and the Galra’s rapid ascent into power with each passing year, the new Head of the organization, along with her trusted assistant and tech-master, had returned. There was a war on.

There had _been_ a war on, for thousands of years. But Lance and the rest of his team had only just come to realize this within the past three years. In Shiro’s case, four.

Lance had never felt older than he did once he joined Voltron; the training was brutal (even more brutal than boot camp), the shooting exercises had been difficult and time-consuming, and they’d dived right into battle before Lance even got the chance to really be a teenager, for the last three years that he had.

And then there was his specialist job, the one that kept him busy when he wasn’t already preoccupied with fighting alongside the other Paladins. Freeing planets was no easy task, and neither was being a glorified hitman.

 

Lance could see the same kind of age hanging on Keith’s shoulders, how it weighed them down. They didn’t get that sag from the weight of the armor, and Lance knew it.

Lance could only assume that, should the Galra pick up even a hint of what Keith was up to, he was basically a dead man walking.

“I believe you,” said Lance. And he did. At least, he wanted to believe it. “You said you would get me out of here?”

“I will,” Keith replied without hesitation.

“What do I need to do?” Lance caught the gaze of the Galra before he could look away, trapping yellow with blue. Keith didn’t waver or back down with his own stare.

“For starters,” Keith said, “you need to pretend to be, uh, really sick. Like, dying sick.”

“Easy enough,” Lance grumbled, waving a hand vaguely at the rest of himself to make a point. The Galra scowled.

“Try a little harder, maybe.”

“If I tried any harder I actually _would_ be dead.”

“Don't get my hopes up."

"Go fuck yourself."

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. "I swear, you are the most ridiculous-"

"You started it-"

"I started nothing!"

Lance gave him a _look,_ just then, and with a sly grin he brought a hand up, raising a finger to his lips in the universal sign to  _be quiet._ "Careful," he murmured, lowering his voice, "The monitors have ears, remember?"

Keith looked like he might actually strangle Lance, right there in the cell, with no monitors to witness the petty act of murder.

But something deep within his better judgement kept him from doing so. His expression calmed. The tension in his shoulders lessened, if only a little. "Look," Keith snapped, going quiet, "I don’t want to have to sedate you for this, you know.”

Lance frowned at that. “Sedate me?” he asked. “Is that what you do for the other prisoners?”

Keith hummed, nodding back. “A refined serum, to knock them out. It sends their vitals out of wack, so when the medical bots do a scan the prisoners show up as—”

“-So sick they’re practically on death’s doorstep,” Lance murmured in, eyes growing wide as everything began to click into place. So this wasn’t a game. Keith really had been telling the truth about keeping as many prisoners alive as possible. Dumbstruck, Lance continued to look back at the Galra prince, but this time, with a new level or respect. “But where do you take them?”

“Too risky to tell you here,” Keith said, “but you’ll find out, if everything goes according to plan.”

“And the plan is…?”

Keith’s ears perked up, all of a sudden. With a swift turn of his head, he shot a look through the glass partition, standing up fast.

Just in time for a sentry to pass by the cell.

The sentry halted, turning a helmet-covered head to look in. It stared through the glass with its eyeless face, like it was looking for something. It waited a tick, and then resumed its march down the corridor.

Both the sniper and the soldier waited quietly until they could no longer hear the metallic _clicks_ of the sentry’s feet against the floor.

Lance could see Keith visibly sigh with relief. The sentry would have seen a Galra questioning a prisoner, nothing more. Hopefully.

Turning around, Keith curled his hands into fists, then relaxed them again. Lance remained where he was as Keith sat back down across from him to resume their relatively private conversation. Well, with the added risk of being overheard by monitors, but they weren’t exactly yelling. Lance doubted that Keith was stupid enough to carry out a conversation like this if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

“I don't want to give you the serum, because I need you alert if I'm getting you out of here," Keith continued, more urgent now.  "I have to bring you out personally since I can't let the sentries get a hold of you. Just fake sick as hard as you can. Stay on the cot, moan and bitch about, I dunno, your shoulder or something,” he waved at Lance’s formerly dislocated shoulder. It was fine now, but it still ached a little when he moved it. Still, Lance didn't appreciate being told to bitch about an injury that _had_ actually caused him a fair amount of pain. Now Keith was just being rude.

“ _Hey.”_

“Or if you can vomit on command, go for it,” Keith suggested with a shrug. “Up to you. But it has to be convincing, and I mean Galra-level convincing. If anything’s even a little bit strange to them, they’ll smell you out. And then you’ll be in even bigger trouble.”

Lance tried very hard not to let that pressure get to him. “Great,” he said, “fake sick. Puking up those nasty meals they’ve been feeding me should be easy enough.”

“Glad to hear it,” Keith muttered. Now was another time that Lance could definitely see the Galra rolling his eyes, even if it was difficult to tell at first glance. “Once you’ve been confirmed as near-death, the others will want to needle you for even more information. They’re not gonna let you go that easily.”

Lance raised an eyebrow, thoughtful. “And by ‘others,’” he said, using air quotes, “you mean Sendak and his pet snake, Haxus.”

“And Commander Prorok, but he’s not as well-trusted within the inner circles.”

Lance snorted. “And _you_ are?”

“I’m Galra royalty,” Keith said with another shrug. “Doesn’t matter if I act like a spoiled ass with an ego. I still tend to get my way.”

“Ohoho, _now_ look who’s a cocky son of a—”

“Do you want out of here or not?” Keith interrupted, beginning to sound impatient. Lance rolled his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Then do as I say.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Uh, really?” Keith crossed his arms to mirror Lance, a sight that was nothing short of priceless. “I don’t think you have much of a choice.”

Lance scowled. The guy had a point. Even so, he didn’t like it. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Whatever. I’ll play sick and if they come to question me again, I won’t talk. They already tried it before. You saw what happened.”

“That’s what concerns me,” Keith murmured, looking away.  It was obvious that he didn’t expect the sniper to react well to his next request when a small grimace spread across his face. “It’s only fair that I warn you… It’s about your friend.”

“Who?” Lance asked. Then he remembered. “Wait, Shiro? What about him?”

“I think you need to accept the fact that we probably won’t be getting your teammate out of here—”

“What!”

“ _Shh!”_ Keith hissed, pointedly looking back up towards the ceiling before returning his focus to Lance. “Not _yet_ , at least.”

Lance pouted and made an effort to stand up, but he winced and thought twice about it when his muscles protested. He ached, but he ached more to see his team that he did to rest his own body. Keith eyed him worriedly but made no move to stop him; Lance gave up the effort on his own, letting out a less-than-dignified huff. “I’m not leaving this ship until I know that Shiro is coming with us.”

“He’s already been taken to one of the holding cells,” Keith answered with a shake of his head. “He’ll be sent off to one of the bigger ships within the hour, and then they’ll make him fight. There’s no saving him. It can’t be done, not here.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Lance spat, although he kept his voice down—He wasn’t a total idiot.

This was all so messed up, all of it, and it was no one’s fault but his. “We leave him behind to fight? To be killed?” He threw his words at Keith like knives, and they seemed to have the desired effect, because the Galra looked even guiltier than he had before.

Lance’s next words died on his tongue when Keith heaved a sigh, saying, “Something tells me he’ll make it. He might not, um, be the same coming out of it,” Lance paled, although Keith pressed on, “but if he’s the human that the other soldiers say he is, then he’s got more of a fighting chance than you might think.”

Lance’s jaw was set tight. He _knew_ that Shiro could hold his own just fine. But no, no, he wasn’t going to leave his teammate behind—

“Once I get you out of here I’ll go back for him. I’ll find him, Lance. You have my promise.” He stuck out a hand.

At first, Lance glowered at the hand extended for him.

But then he mulled it over, all within about ten seconds, and once he actually rubbed a few brain cells together amidst the burning in his temples and the roiling mess in his head, he did, reluctantly, _kind_ of see how logical the plan was.

This was not an ideal arrangement, nor was it failsafe (like, at all), but it was their best option. Their only option, really. If Keith was telling the truth.

Lance lifted his arm and grasped the outstretched hand in his own. They shook on it.

 

“I’ll hold you to that,” he muttered, before letting his hand drop back to his side as his eyes fluttered shut again. In an instant, all the day’s events had suddenly caught up with him. Man, he was _not_ feeling too hot right now…

“H-hey, hang on a sec,” he heard Keith say, for whatever reason sounding worried again, all of a sudden. “Don’t—whoa, there.”

Lance felt himself being caught just as he fell forward, which hadn’t been his intention at all. He’d meant to lean back _against_ the wall, not away from it.

Now he was slumped forward, his head buried in a Galran chest-plate. Keith’s suit.

“Don’t—Don’t fall asleep just yet, all right?” Lance heard him say. There was that _worry_ again, something that still had Lance puzzled.

Keith had started out as a nameless mark with a pretty face, but now he was.... What? Real? Not that he’d exactly been dull before, but now, he’d become something that a sniper should never allow their mark to become.

A name. An association with something that wasn't the order to "kill on sight." Not a number. Not a stranger.

The Galran prince, ace pilot and Master Sergeant, was no longer mark #223.

Now he was _Keith_ , and Lance was in over his head, which in turn might’ve been over his heels.

“Shit... I really shouldn’t be doing this…” the Galra muttered as Lance’s head rested clumsily against his chest. The muttering was followed shortly by a blunt, “Screw it.”

There was the sound of Keith scooting around a bit.

Then an arm was circling around the sniper’s waist, before Keith propped his other hand against the wall as he pushed up, lifting them both onto their feet. Lance’s legs nearly gave out and he felt the newest wave of vertigo hit him out of nowhere, making him feel like he'd been heavily drugged. He reached an arm out blindly as the feeling of being weighed down by lead began to overwhelm him, but he held up long enough to let Keith guide him over to his cot, where Lance felt himself being helped down again.

Lance groggily batted the helping hands away and lowered himself to sit on the cot, but he didn’t resist when a gloved hand pressed flat against his chest to push him down all the way. Once Lance was resting completely horizontal, with his back flat against the hard mattress, the hand retreated.

Lance sighed, drifting off quickly, and maybe it was just his electricity-addled brain, but he could have sworn he heard Keith say, very gently, “Get some sleep.”

For all it was worth, Lance actually did.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

The cell brought all manner of horrors screaming back into his memory. The memories came in bursts, vivid and alarming, waking Shiro every few minutes.

His cell was dark, and he was alone.

The experience wasn’t so different from that which he’d known four years ago, sitting in a cell just like this, every day, only to be brought out every night, or every other night. There was always someone new to battle. Always someone new to beat. Always a new squadron of Galra monsters to entertain for the pleasure and the glory, even though Shiro felt none of that glory, only guilt.

Most of the time, he didn’t even want to win—some of his opponents couldn’t have been older than what Pidge was now. Fourteen? Fifteen? Some were human, but most weren’t. Either way, they’d looked scared and unfit for the brutality of the arena.

The only ones that Shiro felt the least remorse for beating were the ones who were bred fighters, typically planted in the arena by the Galra. Most of those opponents were after blood, more than they were after the idea of seeing their families again. If they even had families. While they had been harder to take down, beating them in the arena had been easier for Shiro to swallow, much more so than fighting against an innocent.

He couldn’t save everyone.

 

_Click, click, click… click…_

Metal boots against metal floor. Sentries.

Before he knew it, Shiro was swept away in another memory.

_The sentries were coming to take him. They were bringing him to fight again. Again. Always someone new. No time to rest, he was the Champion now, and he couldn’t lose. He couldn’t lose his chance of finding the Holts, of getting them out of here._

_He was tense as anything, and it was no wonder some of his hair had already begun to grey around the edges._

He snapped out of it when a very real _swish_ reached his ears.

The little square hatch of his cell door slid open, and Shiro shrank back when a hungry pair of eyes peered in, one yellow, and one a bright, electric red.

Sendak.

 

Another memory.

_Pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before, ripping through his arm as a woman screamed a string of words in a language he didn't understand._

Then the memory of waking up on a cruiser.

_Getting the hell out of there, one year after being taken by the Galra. Escaping in a pod. Returning to earth with so few memories. So little information to put to practical use. Only the fodder for his nightmares._

It was team Voltron who’d found him, _rescued_ him, and since he had nowhere else to go, with no family to speak of and no home on earth, he took to the team quickly. They’d eagerly accepted him as their leader.

The image in front of him now was no memory—this was real, and it was paralyzing.

Sendak grinned from the other side of the cell door, which was thick and made entirely of metal, not a trace of glass anywhere. It was the furthest thing from the cell block where Lance was being kept. This place was older, grittier, and much more used. The Galra liked their entertainment, after all.

“Are you ready to fight, Champion?”

Shiro grit his teeth and made no noise, even when the cuffs holding his wrists behind his back bit into the skin there.

The chain that connected the cuffs to the wall clinked faintly, however, and the sound of rumbling laughter echoed into the cell. “Ready or not. It hardly matters.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Hunk sulked in the pilot’s seat of the yellow cruiser. It was difficult enough to track Shiro’s cruiser in dead space with a Galra ship in such close range, but it was either harder to do with the knowledge that Lance and Shiro were both captured.

Or… or worse.

Hunk didn’t want to think about it.

 

Coran sat in the passenger seat, double-checking the helmet of his suit. His waistcoat and tight pants had been replaced with a suit similar to the ones the Paladins wore, snug and temperature-controlled. And space travel-ready, obviously. Coran had his own role to play, and that was to assist Hunk in not only locating Shiro’s cruiser, but getting into said cruiser and flying it back to headquarters, following behind Hunk.

If the black cruiser fell into the wrong hands… Coran shuddered to think of the consequences.

“I miss Lance,” Hunk sighed, frowning as he tapped at the control panel to keep his cruiser locked on the black cruiser’s last coordinates. “Like, a _lot_.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah… I just want him back, Coran. He’s my best friend. If anything's happened to him...”

Coran nodded, but didn’t say anything. Of course he knew.

“We’re gonna get them out, though.”

“Absolutely,” Coran answered immediately.

Coran might have been the last of two Alteans in the known universe, had had his planet destroyed, and had since taken on a great burden in getting a new team Voltron together—but he remained a steadfast optimist. And even though this situation was _not_ going to be an easy one to fix, Coran really did believe what he said next, which was, “Lance and Shiro are both resourceful, and they’re bright, make no mistake. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if the both of them have already found a way out themselves.”

Hunk sniffed, turning to look at Coran with a dubious frown. “Wouldn’t they have sent out a tracking signal by now, if they had?” he asked.

Sighing, Coran reached out to place a delicate hand on the Paladin’s shoulder. “For all we know, they’re too far out of range to send one. But I have faith in them— I know you do as well. Keep your chin up, we’ll find them.”

With a watery smile, Hunk nodded a silent ‘thank you’ to Coran, before turning back to the main controls. They still had a few hours to go before they reached the cruiser. Here was hoping they made it before the Galra did.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Keith returned to Lance’s cell within a few hours, and when he did, his plan was a little more substantial than ‘puke into the latrine and hope they send you off to die in a meteor belt.’

 

Their arrangement was a little different from earlier **:** Keith and Lance sat side by side against the back wall, putting them right in the monitors' blind spot. It was a lot more convenient than last time, when Keith was directly in range of the Galra surveillance. Luckily, he hadn't stayed for very long, that time.

The new arrangement was also a bit... awkward. Most Galra didn't exactly walk into their prisoner's cells and take a seat next to them. Lance actually scooched a good yard away before Keith muttered, “Oh _please_ , you’d think the Galra were infested with cosmic morbis or something.”

“I’ll assume that’s your version of rabies,” Lance groused, crossing his arms.

Keith didn’t ask what ‘rabies’ were, not that it mattered.

 

They sat for an hour like that, bouncing ideas off each other without much eye contact but certainly with a lot of bickering. But at least they kept it quiet.

“They’ll lead you out to the hangar with a group of other prisoners, once they’ve declared you too ill to fight and too stubborn to talk,” Keith whispered. “You’ll be taken up five levels. When they do, keep an eye out for your teammate. If you spot him, let me know. If he hasn’t been moved yet then maybe they won’t move him at all.” His expression clouded for a tick, before Keith shook his head and said, “Don’t hold me to that, though.”

“So I’ve got to act like I’m on the verge of death, basically, and then… walk a few flights of stairs? That’s it?” Lance asked. A thin eyebrow went up as he quizzically studied the Galra’s expression—yup, the guy was serious.

“Guess so, yes,” Keith answered.

“But… but wait, I’m not even wearing socks!”

Lance wasn’t wearing much of anything that could qualify under the category of “decent” or “practical,” or even “clean,” the way his oversized shirt slipped down over one shoulder while he waved his arms about, ever thankful for his undershirt. His hair was a mess, his skin felt gross and he was thankful for the good genes that kept his skin relatively acne-free, or else he’d be breaking out, big time. Lance was also _seriously_ in need of some deodorant and a nice, hot shower, not necessarily in that order. And, yeah, he needed some socks.

He’d discarded his old ones the day before, when he finally deemed them too smelly to continue wearing. For Lance, that was really saying something.

When he woke up next, his discarded socks had disappeared. Someone had probably taken them for waste.

Keith frowned. “Why does it matter?” he asked.

“Well I can’t just waltz out of a Galra ship and onto a jet," Lance complained, "for a trip that’s gonna take god knows _how_ long, since you won’t flipping tell me—”

“I’m not gonna remind you again…” Keith grit out as his eyes flicked to the ceiling.

Lance fumed. But he lowered his voice. “I’m not going to set out on a trip through space with literally nothing but the clothes on my back, minus my _socks_.”

“Well I don’t have time to pick up a pair of socks, just go barefoot.”

“But—”

“But _what?”_ It was clear that Keith was considering his life choices right now.

Sure, Lance was a little whiny sometimes, but this time he totally deserved to whinge. Still, he (reluctantly) toned it down a notch, if only for the sake of keeping this one, singular Galra soldier on his side.

“I might step on a nail or something,” Lance grumbled lamely.

“Galra don’t leave that stuff just lying around, what kind of idiots do you think we are?” Keith asked. Then his brow scrunched together pensively. “Actually, don’t answer that. You made that pretty clear earlier.”

Lance’s heart sank when he realized what Keith was getting at.

Oh yeah, all _that._ The generalizations. _All Galra were scum._ That.

…Yeah.

If there was ever a time Lance regretted saying something, it was that.

“Fine," he said. "Will I get a weapon, at least?”

“Not until we’re on the jet, you won’t.”

That made Lance huff even more.

“You’re so… _whiny,”_ Keith commented, bringing his own knees up to his chest in lieu of crossing them beneath him like earlier. Lance watched out of his periphery, silently wondering. Keith put on a good show in front of the other Galra, but here in the cell and talking to Lance quietly, with no one around to hear them or see them (they hoped), Keith seemed smaller. Lance could kind of understand why. Although he’d prefer to know the whole story.

Now, though, discussing escape plans with the threat of being caught hanging over their heads, it would be pretty bad timing on Lance’s part if he wanted to ask for Keith’s fucked up backstory. That could wait.

When Lance got out— _if_ he got out, which he crossed his fingers and prayed wasn’t as impossible as it sounded – he would ask so many questions it would make the Galra’s head spin.

And there was no way in hell he was letting this guy, pretty face or not, come back to the ship alone to get Shiro. Lance was going to help whether Keith liked it or not. But first, socks.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Sendak waited for the door to the surveillance chamber to slide shut, before he said anything. “Speak,” he growled.

Haxus nodded, keeping his arms behind his back as he paced. “It is the prince, Commander.”

“What about him.”

Slowing his stride, the soldier turned to face the panel of screens on the wall, slowly approaching the panel until he was no more than a foot away from one of the tiny monitors, where an empty cell stared back at him. He reached out a hand to tap at the image. “The prince entered the sniper’s cell exactly one hour ago.”

“The cell looks empty," Sendak noted. "He's found a blind spot, I take it.”

Haxus nodded. “The prince has not left the cell since, and neither one has come back into view. I wanted your opinion, sir, as it seems highly suspicious for the prince to interrogate a prisoner out of range of the monitors.”

“And you haven’t heard them speaking, I presume.”

The comment seemed to have Haxus's feathers ruffled. His lips pressed tight in thought, before he answered. “A conversation of any kind was difficult to distinguish, for the most part. I’ve managed to catch bits and pieces. They were discussing the Champion, I believe."

"The human."

"Yes," Haxus murmured, glowering at the screen, "But the rest is meaningless without context.”

“I see.” Sendak obviously did see, but he also didn’t appear to care. In his eyes, excuses were just excuses, and Haxus had failed to tell him anything of importance. Only excuses for why he  _didn't_ know anything useful. Haxus was one of his best soldiers, and a skilled infiltration specialist; it was unlike him to have gathered so little with the resources they had at their disposal.

“I would have an easier time if I could see them, maybe get a scan on movement and read their speech that way, but…” Haxus tapped at the screen again, which of course, was empty.

Sendak followed Haxus’s finger, seeing the same problem. “If you had to guess, what would be your theory?” asked Sendak.

It wasn’t really a question, so much as a nudge. A challenge. Sendak already had his own theory, that was obvious, but Haxus knew when he was being tested.

“I believe our little prince might be a traitor, Commander,” Haxus said without pause.

Sendak grinned. “My thoughts exactly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the people who started reading this when it was first posted and actually decided to stick around for more, thank you a ton! And to those who only just found this fic and decided to go past the first chapter, your support is so appreciated, and I hope you're enjoying the story! Much love <3


	7. Blue Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes, I know that the updates are taking a longer time (this is because, surprise! School's started back up). And yes, the updates will continue to take longer. But as a gift to you beautiful readers, I've written up a pretty lengthy chapter to mull over all you want while the next installment is in the works. Hooray!

Keith stayed another hour.

Lance didn’t get his socks, but he did get another two hours of sleep, which was fine by him. At the very least, it was another two hours for the ache of the aftershocks to ease up. Now the pain was so little, he couldn’t be bothered to dwell on it.

It was after the two hours were up that the time came to put their plan into action.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Shiro looked around the cargo ship.

It was bad enough to round prisoners up like lambs to the slaughter, but packing them into a cargo ship like sardines only added to the humiliation. And the heat. And speaking of, it also reeked of alien B.O.

Ever-present amongst prisoners of the Galra was the indignity of it all; to be treated like little more than animals, bred for entertainment and shipped off likewise.

Shiro was with a group of at least thirty or forty other people from all different species, different races, but something was weird: He saw very few, if any, younger prisoners.

Everyone looked relatively healthy.

There was only one conclusion Shiro could draw: These weren’t your standard prisoners of war.

Most of these guys looked like fighters— like they had a fighting _chance_. A few looked gnarly and mean, and Shiro could only assume that some of these prisoners were just… born killers. Maybe it was something about the way they eyed Shiro like he was the main course on the menu. Maybe not.

Not all of them were like that, but the few who stood out to Shiro certainly were. He was sure as anything that he was in for a whole other mess of trouble now. This was bigger than an extraction; _t_ _his_ was going to be one hell of a fight. He just wished he knew where they were going.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

“Uh, I don’t think this is your greatest idea to date, buddy.”

“Well do you have a better one?”

“Yeah?” Lance glanced in the direction where Keith kept looking nervously, wondering if the monitors were some kind of tech that only the Galra could see, because Lance sure didn’t see anything. “How about you find me a weapon and I help you tear these guys up!” Lance threw his hands in the air. “I’m kind of a soldier too, y’know.”

Keith frowned.

Lance groaned. “I’m a sniper of _Voltron,_ remember? The best one, in fact."

"Oh _right_ ," Keith said, rolling his eyes, "and from what I've heard, you're also the _only_ sniper of Votron."

"O-oh, so you've heard of me?"

"You're not getting a gun, idiot."

"But I’ve been trained for stuff like this!” Sticking a thumb towards himself, Lance insisted quietly, “You put me in a firefight, and I’ll fucking _annihilate_ those other guys.”

“Like I’d ever trust you with a weapon after you almost killed me.”

“ _Wha_ - _at_?” Lance asked innocently, “You mean back in the hangar? That was—pfft! That was nothing.”

“You were literally sent to kill me.” Keith’s expression was deadpan at best, and one hundred and twelve percent ticked off at worst. “That was, quite literally, your job.”

“But I _didn’t_ kill you,” Lance felt the need to point out. “We've been over this. And you’re trusting me now, aren’t you?”

“Don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Touché.”

“And to be fair, it’s mostly because you don’t have a weapon that I'm even in here.”

“Well neither do you.” Lance’s brow furrowed as he scanned a line down Keith’s person, actually checking for weapons. That was when he caught sight of something—a little black handle, the hilt of something very small. A knife?

Ok, so Keith _was_ technically, sort of, armed. But it wasn’t like Lance was totally defenseless, he did still have his fists and his feet and his teeth. He could have taken a swing at Keith whenever he liked.

And he hadn’t.

So, that had to prove something, right?

“Just stick to the plan we already have,” said Keith.

“Whatever.”

The plan was stupid simple. Lance would lie in bed, same as he used to when he wanted an excuse to stay home from school and pretended to be coming down with something; and Keith, well, he would be doing all the talking. He was a prince, he might as well play the royalty card to their advantage. Fingers crossed it wasn’t total bullshit.

“Commander Prorok is scheduled to arrive soon, you should probably get ready. Once I get Prorok to declare you unfit for further interrogation, we’ll only have ten minutes to get you to the hangar, before they realize something’s up.”

“Will ten minutes be enough time?” Lance asked.

“Let’s hope.”

Lance didn’t like the sound of that.

At this point, it was their only option—that, or death.

 

They spent the rest of the wait in silence.

 

Lance curled up under the thin, threadbare sheet and tried to look like he was on his deathbed. It wasn’t too hard, considering he’d had plenty of near-death experiences before. There'd been one really bad scare, worse than the rest.

The worst case had been the incident that ended up giving him the injury on his shoulder, leaving behind mottled scar tissue, discolored with red and pink, but mostly white. Every time he thought about it for too long, he was reminded of why he couldn’t screw up, could never screw up again. He couldn’t allow that of himself. He promised he wouldn't.

But he had screwed up, this time.

The marred skin underneath the prisoner’s uniform stung, if not physically then at the very least, it hurt to think about, tainting his brain, laughing at him as it seemed to grow worse with the reminder of the electric shocks from only hours ago. Haxus’s “interrogation methods” couldn’t have been administered much earlier than that. Lance wouldn’t forget the chair, and apparently, his body wouldn’t let him forget, either.

Maybe he _was_ dying.

No, that was just him being a melodramatic ass. Still, Lance felt a lot of pain. Painkillers weren’t going to fix shit at this rate.

 

Finally, the partition _swished_ open.

Keith was already on the other side, and Lance hadn’t even seen him get up.

Lance didn’t see the door open, having shut his eyes, but he heard it. He didn’t look around when the footsteps proved decidedly heavier than Keith’s. Smaller footsteps followed from a distance.

“What have we here?” someone rumbled, very low and very… not in the mood to be bothered with Lance. So this was Prorok. He already sounded like a total dickhead.

“The prisoner is extremely ill,” there was Keith’s voice, taking up an imperious tone with the commander, “I am proceeding with some additional questioning before I decide whether or not to send him with the others. I wanted you to see for yourself. I believe it is in our best interests to get rid of him.”

“Surely a member of Voltron is a little too valuable to dispose of so quickly?” Prorok rumbled, but Keith held his ground well.

“He’s a liability.”

“He could be useful.”

“How useful could a sick, suicidal prisoner be?” Keith snapped. Lance hoped this guy wasn’t overstepping his boundaries. Prince or not, now he just sounded snotty. Prorok certainly wouldn’t like that.

“We can always find a new way to extract information,” Prorok suggested coolly. “A sick prisoner is a weak prisoner, and weak prisoners tend to talk with little need for persuasion.”

Keith scoffed, standing off to the side somewhere. Lance felt better just knowing he was in the room with Prorok, instead of leaving Lance alone. “Yeah? Well, not this one.”

“Hmm..” Prorok went quiet.

“I _was_ going to take this up with Commander Sendak,” Keith said airily, sighing like someone who dearly hoped they wouldn't be disappointed. It sounded ridiculous on him. “But I decided your word was just as good, if not better.”

Lance resisted snorting at the grossly false praise. But it seemed to have the desired effect on Prorok.

“I see,” said the commander, sounding a little more thoughtful. “I am sure a sentry or two can escort him to the medical bay before continuing the interrogations.”

“I—yes, well,” Keith nearly slipped up, fumbling with his words before he thought of something else, “The prisoner, he’s uh, I mean, he’s threatened to kill himself. I told you, he’s gone crazy. He’s _suicidal_ , he threatened to take his own life if we interrogated him any further.”

 

Prorok raised an eyebrow. Growling, the commander idly brushed past Keith, going straight for the cot where Lance lay, prone and completely open to any blow, any attack that Prorok might deliver if he suspected even the smallest thing. But Lance was too terrified to move an inch.

“How would he manage such a thing?” Prorok asked, sounding curious, but not convinced. “He has no weapon.”

“He could hold his breath.”

“And he would revive eventually. Why are you wasting my time—”

“He is _sick,”_ Keith insisted, perhaps a little too forcefully. But Prorok let it pass. “He is too sick to be moved, and too stubborn to talk. I say we get rid of him, before his friends decide to track him down.”

The commander’s laughter boomed around the near-empty cell, unsettling in how loud it was, compared to the usual, eerie quiet of the cell block. “His friends are nothing without one of their Paladins. If team Voltron finds their way to the ship, we will welcome them happily with open arms.”

 _Sure,_ thought Lance, _if by ‘arms’ you mean firearms, you big purple turd._

The footsteps drew closer to the cot.

Lance held his breath, and prayed he looked as sick as he suddenly felt. No faking the churning in his stomach now.

He didn’t move.

His eyes were shut tight. He waited for something, a touch, a poke, a whispered comment, but there was nothing.

Lance wasn’t even sure Prorok was close enough to the cot to have so much as a view of his face.

“He is only sleeping,” the Commander muttered, sounding even more put upon. “One would think, for a soldier of your background, _you_ of all Galra would know the difference between a sick human and a dying one. You’ve seen enough of both to know.”

Something nasty squirmed in Lance’s insides. This time, he thought he might actually be sick.

How much… how much _did_ Lance really know about Keith, though? Keith had explained himself, in the beginning, about freeing prisoners, and it had made perfect sense.

But Keith hadn’t said much about sending people off to fight. About the underground dogfights, the rumours, all the background that Lance’s files brushed over with no solid evidence to back up any of it. They’d discussed prisoners fighting in the context of Shiro’s arrival, his past with the Galra, but even then things had been a little vague. But Keith wouldn’t risk so much for Lance, just for the hell of it.

Right?

 

After another minute, the heavy footsteps retreated from the cot. Lance relaxed a little.

“I will send a sentry in to check his vitals in ten minutes. We’ll see just how sick he really is.”

Lance felt his blood run cold.

“If you are lying, not only will we place him in a new cell – with heavier security– but I will put in a word with Zarkon himself and have you exiled from the royal family.” Ouch. Even for a Galra, that sounded cold. “ _Vrepit sa_ , Sergeant.”

The partition swished open, and then Prorok was gone.

It was the most curt, not-so-passive-aggressive threat Lance had ever overheard.

Once the glass swished shut again, Lance heaved an enormous sigh, relieved that the other Galra was gone.

“Geez. What a dick,” he said, keeping still on the cot in case Prorok decided to come barging back in, just to check and see if he’d moved. He’d seemed like the type to do that sort of thing.

“Ten minutes,” said Keith, sounding strained.

“Huh?”

“We’ve got ten minutes,” Keith repeated. “ _I’ve_ got ten minutes. Shit, shit _shit.”_

“What? What’s wrong?” Lance asked as he opened his eyes. The worry in Keith’s voice was enough to give him pause. He sat up, against the lingering anxiety that someone might walk back in and catch him, decidedly _not_ as sick as he claimed to be (or that Keith had claimed he was).

When he looked at Keith, his worst fears came bubbling back up to the surface.

Those fears were confirmed when Keith explained, “They’re sending a sentry in ten minutes to check your vitals. Shit, I _knew_ you didn’t look sick enough. Of course he wouldn’t take my word for it, of _course_ it wouldn’t be that easy.” He was running his fingers through his hair, looking frantic and far past the point of being a little ‘uptight.’ Keith looked like he was losing hope pretty quickly. His hope and his sanity. 

Lance didn’t like it. What had Keith been through with the Galra to make him so terrified?

Of course, Lance knew about the horrors that the Galra kept in store for their prisoners, their enemies, all those people… but what would a Galran do to one of their own? To Keith? Or did they see him like Lance did: not totally Galran, and maybe a little more human than Keith himself cared to admit?

Lance’s lips puckered out in a pout, the way they did when he was thinking hard. “So what you’re telling me is, they’ll know right away that I’m perfectly fine and dandy.”

“I mean, you’re not exactly in _great_ shape right now,” Keith said as an aside, “but yeah, they’ll know you’re not dying in about three ticks. We’re—”

“Screwed.” Lance finished for him. “…Shit.” He mirrored the sentiment Keith had expressed only moments ago. Yeah, they were royally screwed, unless they came up with a new plan, and came up with one fast.

Keith whirled around, eyes huge and bronzish-yellow and so, fiercely bright, almost burning, and Lance just stared.

“Blind spot.” Keith canted his head jerkily towards the back wall. “Go, now. New plan.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

“What’ll they do to me, if they find out I’m faking it?” Lance whispered, sitting with his knees to his chest against the wall. Keith sat next to him.

Lance could hear him grinding his teeth impatiently. “They’ll suspect foul play on both ends, no matter how many times I deny you were ever part of the plan.” He shook his head. “They can’t know we’ve been planning something together.” Then he added, more quietly, “I’ve worked too hard to get here. If I lose their trust, I lose my rank, my title, my uniform, everything. I’ll be discharged. More innocent people will die.”

Lance swallowed. He already knew that, but it stung to be reminded.

“They’ll track my jet’s flight history, and then they’ll figure out where I’ve been going and… quiznak, it’s all so messed up.” Keith looked about two ticks away from having a legit meltdown. “We need a different plan. If they…. If they find out…”

“Hey, hey..” Lance reached out without really thinking, and laid a hand on Keith’s shoulder-plate, making an effort to look him dead in the eye. Keith froze at the touch, but he didn’t shy away. Even though he looked like his body and soul were screaming for him to shrink away, to isolate himself. “It’s gonna be fine, okay? We’re gonna get out of this.” Lance bobbed his head up and down stiffly, not sure how far he was already overstepping it. But that didn’t stop him, tightening his grip on Keith’s shoulder. “We’re going to help the others. You scratch my back and I scratch yours, right?”

The assurance earned him a tight smile from the soldier.

It was something, at least. Lance would take what he could get. “Okay,” a deep breath, then, “So, any ideas?”

“…Maybe. They’re uh, kind of reckless though,” Keith said quietly, eyes flicking briefly to the monitors before rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “A little stupid, too.”

But Lance grinned. “Reckless is good. And I can roll with stupid.”

“Okay… you’ll be needing a weapon, I guess.”

“Haha!” Lance pumped a fist in the air before Keith _shushed_ him. “ _Now_ we’re getting somewhere. What sort of weapon are we talking? Laser blaster?”

“No.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Oh, I see, so a standard-issue rifle it is. All right, I can work with that too—”

“You’re not getting a gun.”

“What!” Lance was quickly silenced again by a warning finger. “Then what am I getting?” he asked, quieter this time, even though his expression clearly spelled out, _what the fuck, man?!_

Keith reached back behind him, grasping for something on his belt. When he brought his hand back, he presented Lance with something that was definitely not a gun.

“You’ve… actually got to be kidding me,” said Lance.

*****

**()0()**

*****

It wasn’t really fair.

Keith had his Galra suit-- which no doubt also hid an extra layer of blast-proof CosMesh underneath; meanwhile, Lance was pretty much screwed over if he was caught alone, wearing nothing but his prisoner’s uniform as he clutched the small knife that Keith had been so reluctant to lend him.

Lance lay in the cot, just as still as before, and together they waited.

 

Promptly at the nine-minute mark, Keith stood up and left the cell, letting the door slide shut behind him. The one physical thing separating him and Lance. 

He stood outside the partition now, looking in as he waited for the sentry that was supposed to come in exactly one minute. Lance didn’t dare open his eyes while he waited.

 

True to Galra punctuality, the sentry arrived when their ten minutes of “privacy” was up, and not a minute later. A faceless thing with a blaster ready at the hip. It didn’t look any different from the rest. Just a robot... Good. The sniper in Lance told him that this _was_ a good thing, mostly because it meant less of a mess to clean up afterwards.

Which was sort of a horrible thought to have, no matter how true it was.

The second the sentry had its arm outstretched to perform a full health scan, Lance was up and out of the cot, faster than he’d ever thought himself capable of. No shaky legs, no hesitation. Deep breaths -- he was on sniper mode now.

Lance brought the knife down as hard as he could.

 _Voila,_ a sentry with one less arm to worry about.

Keith was right about one thing, at least: the Galra didn’t mess around with their weapons. This knife was just a smidgen more kickass than he’d expected. Lance considered asking to keep it.

The partition slid open in the same moment that Lance (literally) disarmed the sentry, and then there was Keith, so fast with his knife and a small laser blaster of his own, firing a shot through the sentry's helmet, and one more through its chest. Metal sparked and whirred and burned, whining and sputtering as a great big chunk of the sentry’s artificial insides was blown all the way to the other side of the cell. The automaton tottered for a tick, before dropping its blaster with a useless arm.

Keith finished with a swift attack from behind, slicing through the remaining arm like it was made of butter.

Lance couldn’t do much more than stand and watch in awe.

It was clear who the better fighter was here, and it wasn’t Lance. Not that Lance would admit to it (after all, he was still the better sniper).

The lifeless robot gave off a few final sparks before it shuddered, twitching one last time, just a few ticks after it hit the floor. Keith had known exactly where to strike, and he’d struck damn true. Lance stared as the lights in the sides of the sentry’s helmet flickered and died, the last of its threat dying with it.

Keith didn’t look so reassured.

“That sentry was going right to Zarkon’s central command,” he said, “I know it. They knew what we were doing the whole time.” What? How was that possible? “They know we found the blind spot,” Keith said, incredulous. “They know… We need to get out of here.”

“Well _obviously.”_

“No!” Keith hissed. He palmed his forehead. “I mean _now_.”

"Bu-  _Oh_."

 Keith nodded impatiently, resetting his blaster while his eyes flicked left and right, searching the cell and whipping up to face the ceiling. The monitors had, undoubtedly, caught everything. But they knew what they were getting themselves into the second they came up with the plan. The only thing they had left to do was get the hell out.

The Galra might have been expecting a traitor, but they wouldn’t be expecting an escape attempt. _No_ one would be that stupid.

Correction, only two people would be that stupid.

 

Lance suddenly felt himself being tugged by the sleeve, and two seconds later he was on the other side of the glass partition, just before it closed.

 

This time, Lance was on the side that he’d been _dreaming_ of for the past… however long it had been. It didn’t matter. All he knew was, he was on the right side of the glass, free. Sort of.

More like he was no longer trapped in a cell, but that was still only half the battle.

They had a few ticks, no more, before someone noticed. These halls weren’t exactly crawling with guards, but they certainly showed up when it mattered. And those monitors had caught all the incriminating evidence.

Lance hardly got a tick to catch his breath before Keith’s gloved hand dragged him around another corner and somewhat out of sight. The other hand clamped over Lance’s mouth, and Lance—although terribly tempted to A) bite said hand or B) channel his inner five-year-old and _lick_ said hand—smartly didn’t resist.

And not a second too soon. More footsteps sounded barely a meter away, just around the corner. The sound passed.

“It’s time for plan B,” Keith whispered, removing his hand and motioning Lance into a crouch behind him, keeping to the wall. It was hard to tell in this lighting, but Keith looked… calm?

An act, Lance figured.

Well duh, of course, Keith was a trained military _pro._ A few sentries wouldn’t scare him. No, just the people that they reported to. Lance wouldn’t lie, he was pretty scared of those guys, too.

“Plan B?” Lance hissed from behind, “We don’t _have_ a plan B.”

“New plan.”

“ _New_ plan?”Lance bit out, “You mean _new_ new plan. We didn’t exactly have a contingency plan for this one, dumbass!”

“Yeah, well,” Keith snapped lamely, looking even more agitated when a troop of seven sentries, armed and ready, rounded the corner.  

There was no denying this time that they’d been spotted. “It’s time for plan C then— _Run!”_

No time to argue. Lance hauled ass, following barely a yard behind the Galra who’d apparently gone freaking _insane._

Not that he hadn’t already been insane for helping a prisoner, but that was a thought for a later time. Preferably a time when they weren’t running for their lives down the hallway of a Galra warship—without proper battle gear.

Because of course, a Galra soldier and Master Sergeant extraordinaire couldn’t think of a goddamn contingency plan. Of _course_ not. It wasn’t like Keith was gosh flipping trained for situations like these, no sir.

“Yeah okay, see, _this_ is exactly why I said I needed a real weapon,” Lance huffed from behind, keeping up easily with the brand new wave of adrenaline and the very real fear that if he was caught now, he was worse than dead. He was a Galra soldier’s breakfast.

They were out of time. The only thing Lance could think about was getting to his cruiser.

 _If she’s even still there,_ Lance thought, filling with dread. He prayed hard that his blue cruiser was still docked in the storage unit, and that his baby hadn’t been damaged.

Or, god forbid, _repainted._

“We need to get back to that hangar!” Lance gasped, pumping his arms as he tailed Keith around corners, through tight corridors with little light but flickering, red lights probably meant for emergencies, and directly towards another armed squad of soldiers. Lance nearly collided into Keith when he stopped short.

At first, Lance had no idea why Keith had stopped running in the first place.

“What’re you _doing?”_ he yelped, “keep going!”

But Keith didn’t answer.

The next thing Lance knew was a heavily armored body slamming back against him, before weakly pushing back off to fire a sloppy shot with the blaster.

“Keith, what the he— _oh.”_

When Keith turned ninety degrees to fire another shot at the new squad of ambushing sentries, there was no ignoring the enormous chunk of armor missing from one side, revealing shredded black CosMesh and various peeks of lavender skin, leaking purplish blue. Keith was bleeding. He'd been hit.

Lance only had half his brain functioning well enough to raise his own knife, hacking into the neck of another sentry, before stumbling around a corner in time to miss being hit by a zing of laserfire.

Then the alarms sounded. Okay, _now_ they were royally screwed.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

“Thank you so much for coming on such short notice, I cannot stress how important this is. We really do appreciate this.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” said the man in the open vest and aviator cap, grinning a friendly grin while the rest of team Voltron tried to smile back, even though they were all jittery with worry, and sleep-deprived to boot.

When Allura said ‘short notice,’ she really had meant short notice. One hour ago, to be exact. Now a couple of old friends were standing in team Voltron's Headquarters, as per the team's request.

Rolo and Nyma were a dangerous pair, and some of the best intel the team could get.

When people could actually track the two down, that was.

The slick duo, juxtaposed with the badass (if not adorable) addition of Beezer, their cyber unit, there were plenty of underground organizations who were just clamoring to get in the good graces of Rolo and Nyma. Sneak attacks, rescue missions, hard-to-extract intel, you name it, they would find a way to do it. Rolo was the better flyer; Nyma was the better techie; Beezer… well, Beezer had some of the fastest satellite signals in the known universe. And it was wildly cute (to Pidge, at least).

Needless to say, Pidge had a raging tech-crush on the little bot.

Together, the motley trio left behind a nearly invisible footprint within the depths of both cyberspace – and actual space; these guys were always up to the task, if not for a small price.

The asking price was typically a high one. After all, what the little renegade team did wasn’t strictly speaking _legal,_ but… Voltron found a way to work with them without breaking too many rules.

"Least we could do," said Rolo. "After breaking down on that moon, we would’ve been sitting Dorpits if you guys hadn't come along. We owed you one."

“So you think you can find them? Lance and Shiro?” Hunk asked, sounding a little more serious than usual.

It hadn’t seemed like a stupid question to Hunk. But apparently Nyma thought it was, and to say as much, she snorted.

The retrieval of Shiro’s cruiser had gone according to plan; Coran and Hunk had gotten back to headquarters, safe and sound. Unfortunately, they hadn’t had much free time to get a good read on the Galra ship’s intended route, and that meant no getting back Shiro or Lance. So… they were fucked.

Unless Nyma, Rolo and Beezer could work a little magic of their own.

Rolo flashed a cocky grin and canted his head towards Hunk with an easygoing roll of his shoulders, before he leaned back against one of the unused panels. He didn’t look worried. “Look at who you’re asking, my friend.”

Hunk nodded, suddenly looking a little smaller. “Right, right.” The fact that he missed his friends so damn much was written too clearly on his face. The others felt it, too, but Hunk was the only one brave enough to actually show how they all felt.

“Gimme a few ticks, and I’m sure I can pull something up,” Nyma assured, just as confident as Rolo but a little less cocky about it. The rest of them watched her from their various spots that had since become campouts, as they’d all been in the room for the past eleven or twelve hours, waiting for a signal, a distress call, a message, a sound, something. For Pidge, it had been twenty-four hours in the room. Maybe more.

Pidge was probably a little worse off in the sleep department than most of them. Her glasses were crooked, she kept rubbing her eyes—hell, she was on her third cup of Nunvil (with caffeine shots, although no one knew this but Coran, who kept his trap shut)—but no matter how many times she yawned, she wouldn’t let herself fall asleep.

As a result, she’d become a bit slap-happy within the past few hours.

 

“Good news,” everyone’s heads snapped to the main holo-screen, where a massive page of text glowed. Nyma was turned around in her seat to face everyone else and looked casual as anything. But the documents on the screen were probably worth both _her_ life, and the lives of the rest of the people in the room.

“I managed to search out some older files. And I should have a signal running from the warship’s main control panel in… oh, thirty ticks.”

Pidge went slackjawed. “That’s amazing! How’d you do that?”

“Trade secret,” Nyma said, smiling at such an adorable question. But the smallest Paladin didn’t look amused. She wanted to know how to hack into a warship too, dang it.

“Okay…” Nyma had slipped on one of the Headquarters’ headsets, already typing something else into the system. In a few ticks, a rolling line of text slid into view. Everyone watched attentively, but only half the company in the room could read Galran. Pidge adjusted her glasses and squinted at the holographic monitor.

“What is it?” she asked, too far away to make out any specific words.

“A file on the guy you said Lance was assigned to terminate,” Nyma answered quickly, focused on the screen as her eyes went back and forth, following the text. “I’d heard his name before—not sure where, but I think it might come back to me after reading his file. His information might be useful to have on hand.” She skimmed through some of the text, swiping down with a motion of her hand until she reached something that looked interesting. “Okay…” she muttered, “Prince Keith Kogane, thirty-eighth in line to the throne of the Galran Empire, leader of Galra squadron forty-two, nine years of military training… wait, and he’s only nineteen?” she sounded shocked.

Pidge nodded gravely from her swivel chair, swinging her legs idly back and forth. “Yeah. I was just as surprised as you are.”

“Huh… says here he was recently promoted to Master Sergeant—hang on,” Nyma tapped a little more anxiously at the glowing keys. She looked confused. Then her head twitched to the side, and it took a minute before everyone realized she was listening in to something over her headset. All tapping at the keypad stopped as she listened. “That’s weird,” she said quietly, pressing the earpiece closer to hear better.

“What?” asked Hunk.

Hunk and Allura looked worried. Pidge and Coran glanced at each other uneasily from opposite sides of the room. Even Rolo said nothing.

But Nyma didn’t look worried. If anything, she looked very, very interested. “I’m picking up on a report streaming from the warship you’re after,” she said, before waiting a few more ticks as she continued to listen. A curious look crossed her face.

Allura was on the verge of a conniption, waiting as patiently as possible before Nyma relayed her findings while wanting to know exactly what was being said on the other end.

“A prisoner’s escaped… one of the soldiers is helping them."

"A _soldier?"_

"They’re still on the ship, I’m listening in on the alert now,” Nyma explained. “All the soldiers onboard must be hearing this. That prisoner is 'nacked if they’re going up against a whole warship full of Galra.”

“What prisoner?” Pidge interrogated, nearly falling out of her chair at the news.

“Not sure yet, give me a little more time,” Nyma held up a fingerpad for everyone to be patient.

The silence couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch on forever. Pidge fidgeted in her swivel chair. Hunk bit his lip and clasped his hands together, then unclasped them, then clasped them again, finally settling for wringing them like a worried parent. Allura settled for pacing back and forth on her end of the room, near the main doors, and Coran couldn’t bring himself to do much more than watch and wait, although it was clear he was anxious, too.

“All I’m getting is a convict number and— Wait!” Everyone was already so silent you could hear the galaxies whispering. They waited. “…Well I’ll be damned,” Nyma murmured, suddenly perking up, grinning into her headset while she simultaneously scanned the illicitly acquired files, and paid equal attention to the alerts coming in over the system. “Looks like our little friend _Keith_ has gone rogue. And get this,” everyone leaned forward to eye the screen, although the information there was useless without the context of the alerts Nyma was listening to. “He’s been playing a game of wraith and mouse, right under the Empire’s nose.”

“Don’t you mean ‘cat and mouse?” Hunk asked.

No response, other than Nyma’s squint as she frowned at the screen, before making an impressed noise when she skimmed further through the file. “I’m amazed he hasn’t been blasted to hell by now.”

“He was _meant_ to be,” Pidge muttered, “That’s why Lance was—wait, what do you mean by ‘gone rogue?’”

Nyma didn’t take her eyes off the screen, tapping away with one large fingerpad as a new file came up. The holo-screen buzzed, blinked, and then flickered. She frowned. “Hang on, the file seems to be acting up, I just have to— _damn it_ , no!”

The screen blinked red.

Rolo stepped away from the wall to come and check the screen from behind Nyma, but by then it was too late.

“…We’ve- we've lost the file.” Nyma sagged in her chair, looking disappointed in herself. Rolo reached out with a gentle hand, resting it on her shoulder.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he assured softly, “you did what you could. I’m impressed you kept the connection as long as you did.” It wasn’t enough to put his partner in a better mood, but it did wipe away the sour look on Nyma’s face.

Allura stepped forward, agreeing with Rolo. “Really, you did help quite a bit, don’t be so hard on yourself. Are you still receiving alerts from the ship?”

“Yeah,” Nyma muttered, although she didn’t look any happier about it. But Allura refused to be tripped up by a setback like this. She plowed on determinedly.

“All right,” she said, “we can use whatever you hear on the alerts. Do you remember much more from the files?”

Nyma nodded. “Some,” she said, shrugging halfheartedly. “Might be enough, but it also might not be. But I'll search through the ethers to see if I can dig up anything else.”

“We’ll take what we can get, at this point,” Allura answered.

 

But from the back of the room, Coran thought of something. “Um,” he said, getting everyone’s attention. All turned around. “Don’t look now, but if you keep that screen up without wiping those files completely and rebooting, that Galware is going to wipe out the entire system.”

Nyma groaned. Rolo sighed. Everyone else looked at the screen apprehensively.

“Dang it… okay,” Nyma looked torn between hanging onto the files just a little longer, and keeping the Headquarter’s entire security and information system intact.

In the end, though, she nodded to the rest of the team, grimaced as she raised a hand over the keypad, and tapped in a command.

After a final thumb-through at the holo-screen to scrounge up a few more threads of information, Nyma shut down the file and did a quick scan through the system, making sure the thing had been cleared for good. Heaven forbid there was any lingering trace of Galware within fifty kilometers of the place.

The screen went entirely blank. Nyma sighed, leaning back in her chair.

After a bit of coaxing, she finally recounted exactly what she’d discovered from the wiped files: prince Kogane was working on something that hadn’t reached the ears of his fellow officers. Something that had to do with underground fighting rings, smuggling prisoners—  or maybe their bodies, although the files weren’t clear. All she'd been able to dig up was a lot of hints pointing towards treason. "Crazy serious, ongoing incidents of treason."

And then there was something about a small planet, which the prince apparently visited often. Keith Kogane wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Rolo had heard of the planet, but the others had not. He suspected the planet was either a wasteland or an underground anti-Galra base. Or both.

It was astonishing that Nyma had managed to find any of this intel to begin with. Not even the Galra had managed to find this information, apparently. Everyone looked awed when Nyma told them this. Rolo stood by, a small, proud smile on his face.

When she was finished relaying what she remembered from the files (and when Pidge had finished typing it out in shorthand on her clunky, modified laptop), Nyma put an ear back to the headset.

“A report’s coming in now. Alive or dead, this guy’s got a bounty on his head.”

“The prince?” asked Pidge. Nyma nodded.

“It sounds like he’s the one who helped the prisoner escape.”

“Holy _quiznak,”_ Pidge breathed, earning a few disapproving looks from the Alteans in the room. “A Galra prince? Helping a prisoner? He's as good as dead, Christ.”

“It does sound weird,” said Hunk. “And you think it’s Lance? The prisoner he helped, I mean?”

Nyma made the “I dunno” sound.

“Lance. It’s gotta be,” Pidge murmured, sounding hopeful. “But why would he be with a Galra soldier?” Her eyes widened when something else clicked together. "More to the point," she added, "why would he be with  _that_ Galra soldier?"

“Ransom, maybe?” Hunk offered. "Maybe the prince wanted revenge on us for trying to kill him. Doesn't seem too far-fetched, if you ask me."

Allura shook her head. “All the Galra know we’d rather go in and risk our lives than pay up whatever price they ask of us. And Lance would die before he let us give ourselves up.”

Coran stroked his mustache, thoughtful. “Interesting speculations. Care to make a bet on it?”

“Coran!” Allura scolded. “Not this time.”

But Pidge’s attention was already snagged. She spluttered, snapping herself out of her sleep haze at the prospect of kicking someone’s ass in a betting pool. There were spoils to be had, and hoarded food rations for the taking. “Oh, I am _so_ in,” she said, raising her hand and just about knocking over the near-empty cup of Nunvil (good riddance, it hadn’t even been that strong). “So what are we betting?”

“Okay okay,” Hunk made a settle-down motion with his hands. “Okay, so first we have to decide who said what. I say that it’s ransom, _you_ say it’s…?”

“A conspiracy.”

“You always say it’s a conspiracy.”

Pidge rolled her eyes and glared at the Nunvil, like she was considering it. Hm… nah. Not enough kick to it, anyway. “Fine, first of all, are we betting on who the prisoner is?”

“Oh… I thought we were just assuming it was Lance,” Hunk said, suddenly looking much less sure.

“Okay, true enough,” Pidge said. She tapped a finger to her chin, frowning. It wasn’t like this was something fun to think about, but it was really the only way they’d figured was best (and somewhat disturbed) when dealing with separation: Betting pools.

But hey, a coping strategy was a coping strategy.

The team always found each other, time and again, after freak accidents that left them stranded alone or during battles where the outcome looked bleak.

Pidge, naturally, was reigning champion of the betting pools, but everyone else was (not-so-secretly) dead set on beating her at _least_ once. Pidge hoarded coffee packets and various energy mixes from different planets like a motherfucking dragon with a caffeine addiction. This was because she always won them off her teammates.

“I say Shiro’s being held for questioning, and if they did try anything with Lance, they probably gave up interrogating him within, oh, the first twenty-four hours.”

The others looked baffled. Nyma typed away at the holo-screen; Rolo watched, moderately interested. Allura had given up talking them out of making bets long ago.

And then there was Coran, jumping at the chance to join in.

Allura would too, eventually. She always did.

“Wait, why d’you say that?” Hunk asked.

“Because,” Pidge snickered, “if we know Lance, he’s probably attempted to flirt with at _least_ one soldier—I don’t need to retell the story of his _major_ hard-on for that prince—”

“-And we appreciate that you don’t. Very, very much,” Hunk assured, very firmly.

“…Anyway.” Pidge had cooled back down, looking beat. Sort of like a sixty-two-years-old, overworked schoolteacher trapped in a fifteen-year-old’s body. “That’s my bet. Oh! And, I also want to add that Lance has probably made at _least_ one other escape attempt by now.”

“Fair enough,” Hunk had his eye on the cup next to Pidge, and the dregs of the purplish liquid inside. “I bet that he’s already made _two_ escape attempts, Shiro’s made one, and they’ve both been interrogated.”

“I’m with Hunk,” Coran interjected. “Put me in the pool, if you don’t mind.” Pidge quickly typed something into her laptop. “Wait, what are we betting, exactly?”

Pidge shrugged. “It’s more speculation, I think. Whoever’s guess is closest wins.”

“What exactly do we win, if we’re the closest?” Hunk asked, hands set on his hips.

That gave Pidge a little pause. Her bottom lip puckered out as she thought, and she thought very hard about that. “Okay,” she said, “if I win, I get your dessert rations for a month.”

“A whole month?” Hunk whined. Then his expression switched to something more hopeful, and he insisted, “All right, fine. But if _I_ win,”

“Which you _so_ won’t,” Pidge felt the need to add.

Hunk scowled. “Or how about, _when_ I win, I get all your caffeine packets. All. Of them.”

“But you don’t even drink energy drinks!” Pidge screeched, hopping up from her chair. She looked ready for a fight, glasses askew and CosMesh shin guards loose around her legs. The rest of her was covered in her Paladin under-suit and topped with a plain, baggy pajama shirt. She might have been the smallest, but her eyes were crazed with the thought of losing her caffeine. She was ready to cut throats if she had to.

Hunk quickly held up an appeasing hand. “Geez, okay, okay!” he said quickly, “I’ll only make it _half_ your caffeine packets then.”

Pidge calmed. But only a little. “Um, half?” she rebutted, “Okay, okay, _but_ , consider this—no effing way.”

“But… but...” Hunk grasped for a convincing counterargument, but there wasn’t one. His shoulders slumped.

He didn’t really want those caffeine packs anyway—he just wanted Pidge to cut down on her own consumption of the deadly, _deadly_ substance. Caffeine was a poison in Hunk’s eyes. He avoided it like the plague. “Fine,” he said, still a little disheartened, “then I want those imitation pizza bite rations.”

“…The what?” Pidge was avoiding eye contact like a pro, trying to play dumb, but when it came to any and all food-related issues, Hunk and Pidge could see right through each other. Pidge wasn’t fooling anyone.

“You _know_ what,” Hunk said, grinning the most evil grin anyone had ever seen on him, “I’m talking about the ones you made with the ingredients from planet Choritzel. _Those_ pizza bites.” Hunk stared off into space, looking dreamy. “If I win, I’d like to have those, please.”

Now, Pidge was torn.

On the one hand, she loved those pizza bites. And her supply was so limited… it would hurt her, deep in her soul, to lose such precious food.

But on the other hand, Pidge Gunderson did not lose in a goddamn betting pool. Ever.

“You’re on, yellow.”

*****

**()0()**

*****

“Hangar,” Keith groaned, leaning on Lance for support. "Hurry up."

Lance growled (not at Keith, just the whole fucking situation they’d landed themselves in), and readjusted the arm slung around his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah. We’re getting to the hangar. But you’re in no shape to fly. For the _last time,_ we're both going in my cruiser.”

“I’ll heal,” Keith gasped, but even he didn’t sound positive. “We get to the hangar, we’re home free. I made sure your stupid cruiser was kept exactly where you left it.”

Lance would have dropped the guy, just for insulting his precious cruiser, but this wasn't really a good time to do something like that. Lance picked up the pace. They were both getting out of here.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention how much I love Nyma? I really love Nyma.
> 
> (Also just another side note, my roommate bought a box of 150 pizza bites. So pizza bites were on the brain for this chapter, eheh).
> 
> And as always, I seriously enjoy seeing all the wonderful speculations and comments, I read every single one and appreciate them all so much, thank you!


	8. Talk Shit Get Hit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Keith learns an important lesson about insulting a Paladin's cruiser: You don't. If you do, they will fucking come after you.
> 
> Oh yeah and some other important stuff happens.

_ShitshitshitfuckshitfuckshitSHIT_

Lance’s internal monologue wasn’t much more than a string of expletives.

The cruiser was under the guard of at least...

 _One two three four..._ Lance counted distractedly,  _Five six..._

Ten sentries. And unless the sentries suddenly dropped dead of their own devices, Lance and Keith had some serious _ish_ to deal with. Keith was growing heavier on Lance’s arm with each step. If they didn’t catch a break soon this was going to turn into a much more complicated learning experience, a learning experience that Lance had _not_ signed up for when he took this stupid job in the first place.

I.e., Lance was going to have to learn to carry a Galra soldier, bridal-style (or maybe sling him over the shoulder, sack of potatoes-style?), while simultaneously fighting a small army. That wasn’t exactly something they taught in boot camp.

So... no biggie.

“Lance, on my signal, do what you have to do to get to the cruiser. I'll hold these guys," Keith said, staggering a little while Lance tried to get a better grip on him with one arm.

"Um, are you sure about that man?" Lance asked.

"Once you get to the cruiser, set your comms to channel twenty-five point five, and type in G. It should work, and if it doesn't, don't wait up for me. The system should be running fine so the second you get in the ship—”

“Got it, got it,” Lance said, distracted by an oncoming shot from of the sentry’s blasters. He leaned left, taking Keith with him, and the shot missed. Now if Keith would just cooperate for just a little longer, that would be really swell.

But Keith pulled away from Lance in the next moment, spinning around to face the way they’d come in. What was he _doing?_

Another group of soldiers blocked their path.

Surrounded.

Perfect.

Keith held his fire, and since Lance didn’t have a gun, so did he (oh, if only he had a gun, _ohoho,_ he’d tear these suckers _up_ ).

But Lance had eyes only for his cruiser. If he didn’t get to his baby soon, who knew what these guys would do...

It was twenty against two, and only one of them had a gun.

But if winning meant reuniting with his cruiser? Lance would take those odds.

Lance _liked_ those odds.

With the numbers stacked against them, Lance was spurred on, and he was ready to _go_.

Releasing a battle cry worthy of a Viking warlord, Lance raised his (borrowed) knife and charged the group standing ready around the cruiser.

A shot was fired, but due to some brilliant skill – or dumb luck, which he seemed to be oozing at this point – Lance dodged the shot and continued his angry beeline.

All the while, Keith aimed desperately at sentry after sentry, a one-man army against twenty minus the few focused on Lance, and Keith was shouting, ordering Lance to _get the hell back here and do as you’re told, dammit, what’re you_ doing?!  _I didn't give the signal!_

Lance would not do as he was told, ignoring Keith as easily as brushing off a fly.

Besides, he was a little too busy slicing through the helmet of an automaton, wrenching the knife out again to catch another sentry by surprise. Shots were fired more times than Lance felt like counting, but he dodged them all easily enough as another faceless pile of metal sparked and fell to the ground.

It was funny, he’d never really been much of a knife guy before, but hey, Lance had learned long ago that adrenaline could make people do some pretty interesting things.

“Lance!” Keith bellowed, narrowly dodging more laserfire while he continued to back up. A flare of laserfire flew so close to his injured side that Lance was almost certain Keith was going to take a nasty hit. But it missed. Thank quiznak.

 

Keith watched the newest squad approach from the main entrance, then turned back to watch Lance, and _damn him_ if this hadn’t been the midst of a battle, Keith would be drinking in the sight of the Voltron Paladin wasting another two sentries with nothing but a knife. _Keith’s_ knife. There was something about the fact that it was _his_ knife that Lance was using, distracting Keith for damn near two seconds.

Not a lot of time, but then, two seconds meant everything in the heat of battle.

_Shhhwishh_

Another shot – _that_ one was even closer. Keith could feel the heat of the blast at the back of his neck as he turned around, pivoted on his toes and dropped into a dead sprint, aiming randomly over his shoulder with his blaster. The weapon was taking a beating every time Keith brought it up to block oncoming hits.

They were running on borrowed time.

Keith’s path to Lance’s cruiser was blocked by the last sentry standing, less focused on Lance and more focused on the Galra prince-turned-traitor. In the automaton’s eyes, it had perceived Keith as the bigger threat.

And that was very smart of it indeed.

Watching Lance clutch at the side of his spacecraft, seeing him limp (limp? When had he gotten hit?) over to the ramp that extended for him like an old friend, and then scramble up into the cockpit before the cruiser door whirred and slid shut again – Something within Keith came to life.

Keith’s instincts towards Lance had been indifferent at first glance, then guarded. Then finally (if not reluctantly) protective.

Now?

Now Keith was prepared to kill. Keith was prepared to kill for _him_. He didn't like it, but he didn't have to like it to know that it was true. If saving the blue Paladin meant being one step closer to overturning Zarkon – Keith was ready to kill for Lance.

Plus… Lance wasn’t quite as unbearable as Keith had expected the Paladin to be. At the very least, he listened to Keith. Not a lot of people in Lance’s position _would_ listen – especially not to a Galra soldier _._

Keith heard one of his shots connect with a sentry behind him, but he couldn’t celebrate the small victory with the knowledge that nine more soldiers were still chasing after him.

Another shot over the shoulder, and again, it connected. Keith urged himself on, doing his best to ignore the pain gripping his side and seeping into his ribs. He would heal. He had Galra blood in him, after all. A wound like this would be nothing but a bruise soon enough.

…At least, he hoped it would be.

“Hello? Hello! This the right channel? Fu—oh, hang on…” a familiar voice from moments ago filled his ears, heavily muffled by static at first, before clearing up. “Ke—ah, your uh, your highness? Or whatever? Come in, man, I’m on channel twenty-five point five G. You on here? Over.” Apparently Lance had gotten the channel to work just fine. "Are the sentries all gone? How the hell am I getting out of here? Over!” Static, and then, “Do you copy?”

The compact comms unit stashed under his chestplate buzzed faintly against Keith’s chest. He inhaled sharply and slowed down, but didn't stop, and got in a well-aimed shot at a sentry’s breastplate before Keith dipped his chin down to answer on his end.

Metal boots clanged against the floor of the storage unit, closing in behind him.

“ _Keith_ is just fine, idiot _,_ ” Keith bit out, before he backed away when another sentry charged, and Keith nearly tripped. He didn’t fall flat on his ass, thank god, but it was a close call. He ignored his blaster for a minute in favor of the extra knife stashed in his belt, using it to hack and slash when the sentry got in close range.

The first time Keith swung, he missed. Sweating and gasping with the exertion (god, he hadn't trained with a knife in _months_ ), he strained to get a message over the comms. “Lance, I’m not gonna reach your cruiser in time, you’ve got to get out of here before someone like Sendak gets here and—”

_Shhiiiiing!_

The knife dug into artificial sentry guts like nothing. Keith cringed and brought the knife back out as the robot sparked, beeping in confusion and spouting off nonsense in its mechanical voice.

“What?” Lance’s voice returned.

“I said—”

“No, I heard you!” Lance said from the other end, “But how the hell are _you_ getting out of here? I’m coming back out.”

“Oh no you’re not!” Keith spat, before blocking an oncoming attack with the butt of his gun, not bothering to fire. He rammed the weapon into the sentry's impassive face, putting a dent in the metal. It wasn’t just one sentry this time, it was two – one from the front, and another from behind. Keith had to forget the comms for a moment in favor of diving out from in between an onslaught of laserfire. He sheathed the knife and grabbed his injured side with one arm, aiming his gun shakily with the other. Just a couple more sentries. He could do this.

He was sweating profusely under all his armor, and the bleeding wasn't stopping any time soon, but he could do this…

“I’m headed to the main hangar. It looks like I'll be taking my own jet.”

“You’ll never make it,” Lance argued, sounding almost angry. Definitely impatient. Did this guy ever stop whining?

“Just… trust me!”

The other end was static for a tick.

 

“Okay,” Lance said.

 

Keith gritted his teeth and looked over his shoulder as he ran doggedly around a docked cargo craft.

The remaining soldiers tailed him mercilessly and although Keith’s stamina was excellent, his injury was really putting a downer on things. But he would find a way to make it. “Lance, you need to get out of here right now. Expect me out in five. Tops.”

With that, he aimed his blaster at the control panel next to the main doors to the loading dock, and fired.

The shot hit a bullseye on the handprint scanner, thoroughly damaging the controls and setting off more alarms as the doors shuddered, threatening to open.  To Keith’s dismay, more sentries had begun to pour in through the entryway at the opposite end. The ones he had _planned_ on escaping through.

“C’mon…” Keith muttered, eyeing the doors that were opening at a snail’s pace. Lance might not have enough time to get out. Here's hoping they'd be lucky this time.

 

*****

**()0()**  

*****

 

 

The helmet onboard was a battered spare, but it would keep the oxygen in and help Lance, y'know, _breathe_ , once he was in free space. So it kind of didn’t matter how pretty it looked.

 _Function over fashion,_ Lance sighed inwardly, throwing the helmet on. No time to suit up (was there even a spare suit onboard? He couldn’t remember).

The last thing he heard before Keith’s voice cut out was the sound of a booming blast from the exit side, and the tinted window of his cruiser’s cockpit revealed a decent view of the exit doors shuddering open, albeit a little slowly.

The panels next to the doors were smoking orange and yellow, so that probably wasn’t good. For the Galra, anyway.

But for Lance, it was his ticket out. No time to hesitate.

Lance tapped a few instructions into the control panel and grinned when his beautiful cruiser purred to life for him. “Whoa there, baby,” he crooned, patting the armrest fondly, “did ya miss me, Blue?”

In response, the cruiser sent a happy tingling through his fingertips as he gripped the joysticks, a good kind of electricity humming in his veins. Some of the lingering pain, the random waves of dizziness and feelings of being charged up like a fucking electric fan, the itchy tingling in his fingers and toes, all of that subsided, replaced with the hum of a second presence joining his own consciousness. Yeah, Blue was pretty happy to have him here. 

With a carefree _woot!_ Lance thrust the controls to full throttle and the cruiser shot forward, just as soon as those exit doors were opened wide enough.

 _He was free_.

He was free!

Then he felt a shudder when something exploded not too far behind them.

Screw that, he definitely was not free.

Not quite yet, anyway. Would the inconveniences never cease?

 _Urghh, could I just, like, maybe have one moment?_  Lance's teeth ground together and his lips puckered in a pout, concentrated on not getting himself killed only seconds after escaping. _Would that be too much? Just one moment!_

Lance didn’t have time to mourn the fact that, yeah, the Galra also knew how to work spacecraft— too busy running on instincts and adrenaline as he guided the blue cruiser away from the swarm of approaching drones. Drones that were firing on his ass even as he zoomed away from the ship, entering free space.

One of them fired at Lance again.

“Son of a _biscuit!”_ Lance yelped, reeling back his control over his cruiser’s path.

What he wouldn’t give to have his CosMesh suit… actually, now that he thought about it, he _did_ keep an extra suit stashed in his cruiser. Ever since the Choritzel incident, it was just better to have that shit on hand.

He didn’t have much time – if _any_ time – at all to suit up even now that he was off the warship, seeing as he was kind of in the midst of a blazing firefight, but he could afford maybe thirty seconds. Did he really need it though….?

_Phhhhrooooom!_

 

 _That_ was the sound of a missile missing his right wing by less than a meter.

Yeah, he needed that suit now.

Hitting the autopilot button, Lance stumbled out of the pilot’s chair and towards the back of the cruiser, keeping one hand on the walls to avoid falling flat on his face while autopilot took over.

The extra equipment was stashed in the emergency storage compartment in the back, right next to the gear box.

In the thirty seconds that Lance needed to grab his stuff, the flight turned nasty. Really nasty.

The cruiser shook and tilted at a fifty degree angle as a fired shot slammed into one of his wings, but the particle barrier activated around the cruiser in the nick of time, and the wing was saved from being totally blasted off. Lance caught his footing and clambered against the wall, gripping a handhold before he could slam into the opposite side.

It wasn’t a second too soon when he returned to the cockpit, CosMesh haphazardly thrown on halfway with his chestplate hanging loosely from his shoulders, not having properly secured it.

He didn’t know how to get out of here. A flick of one of the control buttons brought up a screen, an image of the action to his left filling half his vision, while another screen showed everything to his right.

There were so many drones. He couldn’t take on all of them, not even if there were twenty Lances with twenty cruisers. And there was no way Keith was going to make it off that ship alive.

The idiot had sacrificed himself -- for a fucking nineteen-year-old who couldn't fight worth shit (even if his flying was fairly on point). Lance couldn't believe it.

The comms of his crappy helmet finally activated, buzzing when a familiar voice took over the station.

“Red to Blue, come in Blue.”

“Keith!” Lance shouted, unthinking as he reached for the joysticks again to pull out of range of fire. Again. “Holy son of a gun, you got out!”

“Obviously,” was the reply he got, terse and a little weak. Lance could hear the silent, _thank you, captain obvious_ hidden in there somewhere, but Lance was too busy focusing on the way Keith sounded more exhausted over the comms than he had a few minutes ago.

Well, duh. It probably hadn’t been an easy job getting out of that hellhole warship.

“Hey, I could use a little help where I am,” Lance called through his mouthpiece, just as a blast whizzed past his cruiser. Yikes, that one was way too close. “Where are you, man?”

“Look behind you.”

Lance automatically pulled up a new screen, giving him a clear view of the action taking place behind him.

Sure enough, Keith’s red space jet sped a few klicks behind, firing with some state-of-the-art war blasters that Lance would give an arm and a leg just to get his hands on. Every couple seconds, the weapons sent glowing missiles hurtling towards the oncoming drones. Lance’s tail was covered, and covered damn well, since every shot from the jet hit the targets like they were being drawn to the enemy with magnets—sometimes they hit two or three drones at a time. It was... frustratingly impressive.

Lance was pleased as punch to have a little bit of backup, even if the backup was very... unorthodox. He might've laughed at the whole situation. A human and a Galra, fighting together. 

With a twinge, Lance realized he was way too far out of range to reach Voltron Headquarters over the communications unit. But he could sync up with Keith’s comms easily enough.

“Keiiith!” Lance gasped when the cruiser shuddered again.

The dumb particle barrier wasn’t going to hold up much longer. Stupid thing had nothing on the barrier back at Headquarters – which was still shit, but only in comparison to current day Galra tech. Lance’s cruiser’s particle barrier was just flat-out garbage.

Another shudder.

“Fudging—gah!” Okay, so Lance would still take what he could get. A garbage particle barrier was better than no particle barrier. “Keith, what’re we doing here?” he asked, desperately tapping at a few more choice controls at the main panel. “We need a plan!” His gloves were nowhere to be found, but they had to be somewhere on the cruiser. For now, he accepted the fact that his palms would probably blister from gripping the joysticks so tightly.

“The drones are directed by a signal from the warship’s main control deck,” Keith said, raising his voice to be heard over the sounds of the intense firefight raging right outside. “But my ship is connected to some of the controls, if I can just find the right frequency and tap into it, I should be able to disrupt the commands.”

“You can render them harmless, is that what you’re saying?” Lance asked, sounding a little too hopeful.

“More or less,” Keith explained, sounding a lot less confident than Lance had been hoping for. “I can probably make them go dormant for a little while, anyway.”

Something niggled in the back of Lance’s mind. “Hang on a tick, you said you’re connected to the – ack! You motherf—what’d I ever do to you, you _shit_ _waffle_?! Urghh!” Lance thrust the cruiser into a barrel roll, temporarily cutting off his conversation with the Galra in the red jet. His stomach flip-flopped; he was never going to get used to barrel rolls, was he?

Righting the cruiser, Lance adjusted the earpiece and tried again. “Sorry," he groaned, then clapped a hand over his mouth. His stomach hadn't liked that very much. "You said you were connected to the main control deck of that ship?” Man, he hoped his last prison meal didn't suddenly make a reappearance.

“Yeah?”

“So can’t they _track you_ then?” Lance marveled at how _he_ was the one thinking things through, a _lot_ more so than a soldier with nine years of training under his belt. But then, Keith did seem like the odd one out, in more ways than one.

Keith didn’t sound as shocked by Lance's observation. “Yeah,” he said, crackling in and out a little over the comms as the image on Lance’s screen showed the red jet, still firing away. Keith must be working double-time right now, trying to act on his plan to disengage the buzzing swarm of enemy drones while actually flying the jet. “But as soon as I put these drones to sleep, I’m destroying the tracking unit.”

“And will that… is that gonna screw up your jet?”

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Well _that_ didn’t sound reassuring.

But according to his records, Keith was an ace pilot. If anyone could fly circles around the Galra, his Royal Mullet-ness could. Lance hoped.

Everything was happening so quickly, but Lance fucking flourished this way. Too many things at once was both terrifying and intoxicating. It was a mental jog and all the gears were turning, well-oiled and ready for the task, and fingers crossed they didn’t burn out before Lance was out of harm’s way. He was giving it his all. No more Galra prison. _Hell_ to the no.

Blast after blast shook the cruiser. Every so often, Lance checked in on Keith’s progress. Still firing away, but no luck on the drones.

A sinking feeling crept into Lance’s gut. Maybe… maybe they really didn’t stand a chance? It was two against hundreds, after all.

If Keith didn’t disengage the drones, that was.

But then again, Lance always did like those odds.

He did his best with the OK blasters from his cruiser, but Keith was taking making more hits, downing drone after drone with the practiced ease of a born soldier. Scratch that; Master Sergeant. And his jet didn’t get hit, not even once. What kind of sorcery—

A  _boom_ so intense that it made Lance's bones feel like they were vibrating rang out through the worst of the noise.

The shuddering stopped.

Catching his breath at the controls, Lance peered over at the minimized screen that he’d dragged up to the far corner of the windscreen. The jet still followed his cruiser close behind, but the firefight had ceased, more or less. No way.

“Uh…” Lance was hesitant to get his hopes up, maybe expecting a surprise attack or something. After a few more ticks of waiting, he murmured over the comms, “Blue to Red… come in, Red?”

No answer.

For a moment, Lance feared the worst.

Then Keith answered, a little raggedly, “This is Red. Over.”

Lance couldn’t help it. He laughed, relieved. “Keith, my man, my _dude,”_

“Watch it…”

“You did it!” Lance whooped into his earpiece and let go of the controls, too elated to care about where the hell he was flying. “We did it!” He was right, they had done it. Keith had done a lot of the heavy lifting, though. Still, what did that matter when the battle was over?

There was no firing, no shuddering every few seconds, just the hum of Lance’s cruiser and the soft crackle of his communications unit in his ear.

Outside the windscreen, the eerie sight of a hundred Galra drones stared back at him, floating like dead fish in the zero-G of space.

“What now?” he wondered aloud.

The comms picked it up, of course, because Keith heard him and answered, “Just follow me, we’re going to be in for a bit of a ride. Your cruiser can’t go to warp-speed, can it?”

“That is a negative on that, captain,” Lance confirmed, quirking an eyebrow even though he knew the Galra wouldn’t be able to see it.

“That’s Master Sergeant, Paladin.”

“Ooooh,” Lance teased, “I thought you said  _Keith_ was just fine?”

He heard growling from the other end. Lance smirked. He’d done his job.

“Just… follow my jet. You ready to get out of here?”

Lance grinned. “I thought you’d never ask."

“Good,” said Keith, and Lance’s eyes flicked to the movement on the little screen, where Keith’s red jet suddenly shot forward, surpassing the cruiser by a good twenty klicks in the span of a second. Lance’s mouth fell open.

“Oh it’s like _that,_ is it?” he said. His hands were already at the controls, flying over buttons as he set the resistance to something a little lower. He was not going to be beaten in a drag race. In space.

“Just try to keep up,” came Keith’s tired, but very, very smug voice from the other end.

“Oh it is _on,_ mullet man.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

While Lance’s cruiser was a bit banged up and generally jostled around, it kept up with Lance’s commands well enough. Poor baby just needed a break was all. And in her defense, she’d been cooped up in a Galra hangar for a week - geez, had it really been that long? Once they touched down at a rest stop, Lance would get her all fixed up.

From the reads on his screen, Keith’s jet hadn’t been damaged at all. Lucky prick.

“I’m gonna assume you shut off that tracking unit, right?” Lance asked, because seriously, this was all going to be for nothing if they suddenly found themselves surrounded by a second fleet of Galra drones, with no backup plan.

It was funny, they never did seem to come up with any backup plans. He hoped this wasn't going to become a thing with them.

Personally, Lance was all for winging it. Hell, he did it all the time.

“The tracking unit’s long gone.”

“Gone?” Lance repeated. “You mean you tossed it off your jet? How?”

A sigh from over Lance’s earpiece.

“I didn’t ‘toss it off my jet,’” Keith said, “I just mean it’s not attached to the rest of the controls now.”

Lance frowned, totally confused. “How?”

“Ripped it out.”

“…Ah.”

Damn. This guy might have been reckless, but he certainly didn’t half-ass things.

 

“So.... Where are we headed, exactly?” Lance asked, after a bit of silent flying, hoping he was hitting the right switch to activate his transmitter. He heard Keith’s voice loud and relatively clear over their private comms channel.

“A very small planet called Tajny.”

“Tiny?”

“Yup.”

Lance's brow pinched. "Is it gonna be safe to land there?"

"The safest we can get, in this part of the galaxy."

“Why’s it called ‘Tiny’?” Lance asked, “Is it really that small? Like, like Pluto small?”

“It’s not _that_ small,” Keith muttered, “it’s—oh, wait, no, it’s not _tiny,_ it’s _Tajny.”_

“Um… it sounds like you’re just saying the same word again, dude.”

“Well it’s spelled differently, all right?” Keith snapped.

“Whatever man."

“Stop _calling_ me that.”

“What?” Lance asked innocently. “My man? My dude? My bro? Bro-tato? Keithy boiiii?" he could practically hear the sound of grinding teeth, and it gave Lance a certain satisfaction that you could only get from pushing someone's buttons. Especially when that someone made it so damn _easy_. "Would you rather I call you Sergeant? Soldier? _Sir_?”

“Doesn’t sound as bad, actually,” Keith answered gruffly.

“Yes, _Sir,”_ Lance answered.

“Now that you mention it, I think that’s more appropriate anyway,” Keith said. “Nice to know you still have a little respect.”

Lance snorted into the comms. “Pfft! Wha-at?” he laughed, shoulders shaking hard. It was a lost cause to try and steer his cruiser now, so he quickly jabbed at the autopilot button, before really losing it. “You think I respect you that much?” Yes, actually, he did have a certain level of respect for this Galra asshole. The guy could fly like nobody's business, fought with a knife like he'd been born for the sole purpose of hand-to-hand combat, and to boot, he was _pretty_... Well, yeah, he was a nice-lookin' dude. 

But come on. _Sir?_

“ _Oooohh_ , okay, so it's a superiority kink, then,” Lance snickered, clutching at his sides.

No snappy remark. Huh.

Then Lance heard a groan from the other end. “Hey…” Lance reigned himself in a little bit for the sake of speaking in coherent sentences. “You know I’m only kidding, right?”

Another groan, and then a sharp gasp on Keith’s end.

 _Shit._ Lance couldn't tell what was going on on Keith's end. “Keith? You all right?”

“Yeah… yeah. Fine,” Keith grit out, sounding a little worse off than before. Lance didn’t like the way Keith sounded like he was having some trouble with his own communications unit. “The sooner we get to this planet, the sooner I can get myself patched up.”

Oh, right. Keith had taken a hit, back on the warship. Lance had forgotten.

Man, he felt like a dick. 

But to be fair, Lance had twisted an ankle (that's what happens when you don't stretch before a battle, kids), so they were sort of even... okay so Keith still had it a little bit worse, and Lance would just have to admit that he was acting like an ass.

“Let’s just keep going," sighed Keith. "Follow my jet and keep an eye out for any more drones. We’ll be there in a day or two.”

A day? Lance hadn’t expected to have to wait a whole day. Thank every god above that there was a bathroom on board. Although… now that he thought about it, Lance couldn’t really remember the last time he’d cleaned it. He supposed he would find out.

 

The trip started out with thirty minutes of straight flying, no talking and all follow-the-leader with Keith playing the leader, before Keith finally sighed into the comms. “You know,” he said, irritable, “if we’d _both_ taken my ship, we might’ve made it there within the hour. But with you flying that cruiser it’ll take us a full day, maybe two.”

“Sucks to suck,” Lance said without hesitation. “If I could wait it out in a holding cell for an entire week, you can wait a day. And what do you mean, ‘with _my_ cruiser?’”

“While your Altean spacecraft is excellent, the tech’s a little outdated,” Keith deadpanned.

“Did you… did you just insult the cruiser?” Lance’s voice was dangerously soft over the mouthpiece.

Apparently, Keith could hear the offense in Lance’s voice, because he was hesitant to answer right away. “Uh… no?”

Not believable enough.

Lance toyed with one of the little red switches at the panel, and... oops.

Seemed he'd “accidentally” fired a laser just shy of Keith's left wing. Keith dodged, even though he didn't necessarily need to. Lance smirked to himself. Good to know Prince Keith Kogane, alleged ace pilot, could still be thrown for a loop every now and then. Although, Lance hadn't technically been playing fair.

"Lance! What the hell!" Keith screeched once he righted his jet.

It wasn’t like he had rearview mirrors on a spacecraft, but if he did? Oh, he’d have some hand signals worthy of a space pirate’s praise.

" _Talk shit get hit_ ," Lance sang into his helmet. "No one insults my baby blue, princess."

There was some muttering from the other end, but Lance couldn’t hear anything distinguishable. Maybe that was a good thing. “Sorry, okay?"

No response.

Lance couldn't have that. How else was he supposed to endure twenty-four hours? It wasn't like the cruiser came with a TV. He was going to have to be civil with Keith. For both their sakes. Gross.

"So…” Lance hedged, “this planet we’re going to. It’s a safe spot?”

“In so many words,” Keith huffed, still put out by Lance's little stunt. “Tajny is just a stop on the way to the actual safe base. We shouldn’t have to stay more than a few days on Tajny, if we can help it. Fair warning, Tajny’s days are very long, about sixteen hours of daylight for every sixteen of darkness. It revolves around its own sun for a cycle of thirty two earth hours.”

“Talk about having a long day,” Lance murmured. His heart plummeted with the thought that, not only had they left Shiro back on the ship – if he was even still _on_ the ship – but they were headed in the opposite direction of Arus. Away from Voltron. Away from the people he had really started to call his family. A second family. Everything was falling apart, and no matter what anyone might tell him later, Lance knew that this was all his fault.

Lance had been separated from his team before, it was just something that came with the territory of being a sniper; Lots of independent work.

But this? This was different. Lance felt like he was running away. Well, technically they were. But would it really have been better, had he taken the shot when he had the chance? Would anything have gotten better if he'd killed Keith when he was just mark 223?

 

There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about that now. Taking a steadying breath in, Lance asked, “So where are we going from this rest stop planet?”

“Osvoboni,” Keith responded immediately, unaware of Lance steadily growing unease. “It has a cycle of thirty seven earth hours. Its sun is called Neomezeny.”

“And Osvo-whatever--”

“Osvoboni,” Keith corrected.

“Sure, that. It’s the secure planet?”

At first, the comms went static, before Keith answered, “It’s… relatively safe, yeah. It’s just always storming, and _not_ like it does on your planet. Meteor showers are a constant thing there.”

“Oh. Nice.”

That sounded, uh, the opposite of nice.

Better than a Galra warship, though. Lance could deal. Lance _would_ deal, if he wanted to live.

“Everyone there lives in homes underground, which is why the Galra still haven’t noticed any signs of life on the planet. In fact, I don’t think they’ve even _reached_ that part of this particular galaxy. Either they haven’t found the planet yet,” Keith rationalized, “or they already found it a long time ago and decided it wasn’t worth the taking. Not yet, at least. Not many resources to take from it. Either way, yeah, we’ll be safe there.”

“For how long?”

More static.

After a longer pause, Lance heard Keith respond quietly, “However long it takes.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

After another hour, Lance decided that he should suit up properly **;** he finally secured his chestplate, dug out the old shoulder pads, slapped on the shin guards, boots, and even found the extra pair of gloves. Only minimal blisters for him now.

But the best part was the socks. Lance never thought he would enjoy the feeling of a fresh pair of socks in his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Been getting busier but I'm really glad I got this chapter done! You readers are so awesome and patient and I'm super thankful to have people getting so excited for each chapter. As always, your comments are super appreciated, and don't be afraid to talk about the fic and show it to other people, too! Best wishes, friends <3 I'm in this story for the long haul *sweats*


	9. One Tajny Detour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's baaack (lol and guess who added an English major? Hahaaaaa I haven't slept in a month) I know it's slow-going, but that's because I want these chapters to be great you guys. Y'all deserve it. Thanks so, so much for the support, you guys make me so happy every time I see a nice comment or a kudos. Hope you all are enjoying it!

The arena was immense.

Actually, scratch that. _Immense_ didn’t quite do it justice.

This arena was about the size of a football stadium. Maybe twice that.

Shiro was out of his league – he’d been out of his league since the moment he set foot on that fucking warship.

And now he was going to fight. This was the Kerberos mission all over again. Only this time it was on such a bigger scale, so many more spectators, so many more factors at play.

But he was going to survive.

Because now, he had a much bigger _reason_ to survive, and that all began with his team. With Voltron, and the fate of the universe hanging in the balance, and hell, the goddamn mission he’d been assigned to in the first place, he was still going to finish what he started: Find Lance, bring him back to headquarters, keep his team safe – his family. Shiro would die before he saw his team fall into the hands of Zarkon. Not today.

Not ever.

A voice rose above the cheers of the masses, the source a Galra sans helmet, standing in the middle of the ring like an umpire, or maybe a halftime performer preparing for the show.

“Today is a special day indeed,” said the commentator, sending a hush over the crowd.

A muscle in Shiro’s jaw twitched. He stood just outside the ring behind the barred door that separated him from the rest of the arena. Sweat had already begun to bead at his hairline. His uniform itched. His fingers wouldn’t stop grasping and releasing the tight material at his thighs while his jaw worked, breathing deeply like he’d been trained to do in these situations. _Breathe. Adjust. Focus. Relax._

He couldn’t relax, and now was not the time to relax.

His opponents were real fighters, this time. Not a bunch of weak prisoners who just wanted to go home, but instead were thrown into the mess without having to do a single thing other than exist.

These fighters were… well, _fighters._ Bred for the arena, thirsty for blood and the crunch of bone, the smell of victory hanging deliciously in the air.

“Today, we see the return of our old Champion, the Earthling with an arm forged in blood and destined for glory. Behold, the mighty Champion!”

The barred door was raised with the clinking of metal on metal, and Shiro squinted as his eyes adjusted to the new flood of violet light that washed over him within seconds.

Someone jabbed at his back, pushing him a step into the arena.

 

Shiro had no weapon, and not a scrap of armor over his prisoner’s uniform, but he still had his arm. While he hated to admit it, it was the one thing that was going to make or break his chances of surviving in the ring long enough to see another day. He hoped.

He only got a few seconds to take in the sheer size of the crowd cheering and jeering, before his opponent was announced, and the gate at the other end of the ring was raised.

So far away in such a large arena, but that didn’t stop Shiro from getting a sense of just how damn _tall_ this guy must be. He couldn’t be anything less than seven feet, minimum. Humanoid, yes, but not human.

In the purplish light, the opposition looked grey-skinned and sharp-boned, long arms and longer, thin legs but no less deadly for how thin it looked. He? She? It? Shiro could only guess.

The start of the fight was announced. The opposition charged.

The audience hollered and generally made noise, more distracting than anything.

Shiro remained where he was, inhaling through his nose, detaching himself from the here and the now, the right and the wrong.

He waited.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

The first five or six hours following the Great Warship Escape were, uh, well….

They sucked ass, all right?

As it turned out, Keith wasn’t very good at making conversation, and Lance didn’t do well with awkward silences.

Lance huffed into the comms, groaned about being hungry and complained about the lack of food on the cruiser, and Keith answered only when he deemed something Lance said to be important, responding with things like, “Yes, there will be food on the safe planet,” or, “no, Lance, I have never heard of a ‘S’mores Pop Tart’ but it sounds disgusting. Please drop it.”

The constant chorus of “Are we _there_ yet,” however, went unanswered.

 

Sometimes, when the comms was nothing but static and a tired silence hung in their ears, Lance would drum his fingers on his knees, breathing in through his nose, out through his nose, like he was fogging up a window. Something he learned a while ago, to help.

He was a fucking sniper.

He was a Paladin of Voltron.

Stress was kind of in the job description.

Breathing exercises only did so much. Sometimes, there wasn’t much he could do besides breathe in… breathe out…

 

“Another ten hours and we should be there,” said Keith, after another round of radio silence. Lance had already peed twice, switched the autopilot on three times just so he could stretch his legs and keep the blood flowing (pulmonary embolisms are nothing to laugh at, folks), and now he was craving food goo.

Yes, food goo. It had gotten that bad.

“Thank fucking god,” Lance muttered. They were more than halfway through their trip.

One thing that really blew about not packing rations beforehand was the huge reliance on the need for hydration. Water wasn’t exactly a thing you could just happen upon in deep space. You either stocked up or… died, basically. The blue cruiser wasn’t stocked up, per se, but Lance always kept a spare water bottle on board. For emergencies.

He took another swig from the bottle and tried not to think about how the water tasted flat. Flatter than Darrell Stoker's ass, even. And Darrell Stoker was a preppy jerk from thr garrison with the flattest butt in the universe.

All that Altean technology, and yet, their water bottles couldn’t keep the freaking water tasting fresh? Typical.

They passed through a sparse meteor belt without a word.

It was only after they came out the other side that Keith’s voice returned over the comms.

“You gonna hold up for the next ten hours, or am I going to have to tow your cruiser the rest of the way?”

Wow. Low fucking blow.

Lance considered firing another laser.

…Better not. “We’re _fine,_ thanks,” Lance bit out. “Don’t you start getting all high and mighty on me and blue.”

“It was an honest question,” said Keith, but Lance wasn’t fooled.

Maybe Keith had helped Lance escape. That was great, really, but it still didn’t change the fact that Lance had virtually no idea where they were headed, he was out of range of communication from the rest of his team, and furthermore, he hadn’t had a single thing to eat in the last twenty-four hours. Oh, and he was currently being led to god knows where by none other than a commanding officer of the Galra army.

To be fair, Keith was _probably_ fired, looking back on everything he’d done to not only get Lance away from the warship, but all those other prisoners, too.

Yyyep, Keith was totally fired.

 

“You talked about my friend back there.”

“Hmm?” Keith’s voice was just loud enough to hear through the static. The farther they flew, the cracklier Lance’s receiver got. It was beginning to get annoying.  They would have to find a new channel to communicate over, soon.        

Lance hit autopilot for the fourth time that day and let the cruiser do its thing. He shook his head, although Keith wouldn’t see it. “My friend,” he said. “The other Paladin. Shiro.”

“Takashi Shirogane,” Keith confirmed.

Lance raised an eyebrow. “What do you know about him?”

“Other than the fact that he’s the Black Paladin?”

“You know something about him. What are they going to do to him, Keith?”

It took a moment for Keith to answer. A million scenarios danced in Lance’s head, of Shiro being experimented on, having his last human arm replaced, or being forced to fight in the ring, the year-long experience that he rarely ever talked about.

Or maybe he was just sitting alone in a cell somewhere, wondering if this time, no one would help him escape. Lance knew the feeling – maybe not as badly, but he found he could relate. 

Worst case scenario, Shiro didn’t make it.

Best case scenario, he found a way to escape within his first day of imprisonment. But that was pushing his luck, even for a master escapee like Shiro.

“I didn’t see him in the usual cells when I came back down to get you,” Keith said quietly. Lance swallowed. “My best guess is they’ve taken him to another warship. To fight.”

“Again?”

“If he wins each round and does well, he’ll  move up to a higher level. If he keeps winning, he’ll eventually reach Zarkon’s main ship. The rest, I don’t know.”

If Lance knew Shiro, he knew that Shiro would make it through whatever they threw at him.

If Lance knew Shiro, he knew that the Black Paladin was headed right for Zarkon’s central command.

"Well then," said Lance, trying to sound confident through his mouthpiece, "I guess we'll just have to go back for him as soon as possible. Once we spend some time getting our act together on Tiny."

He got a halfhearted grunt in reply. 

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

Ten hours earlier

 

“The reports say a red jet and a blue cruiser made their way out of the main hangar.” Nyma’s attention never left the influx of alerts pouring in through the headpiece. “They’re outnumbered and being fired on as we speak.”

“No…” Hunk whispered. The others waited for something more.

Nyma’s brow pinched. “It’s going a little static,” she murmured. A few more ticks went by in tense silence. Pidge looked like she was itching to snatch the headpiece off of Nyma’s head and listen in for herself.

“The line’s gone dead,” Nyma said abruptly.

“What?” said Allura. “You lost the connection?”

Nyma shook her head. Rolo frowned from his place against the far wall. The others waited, fearing the worst. “No, it wasn’t us. The connection was severed from their end. That’s the last source of communication we have to that ship, minus the one where we go there ourselves and have a chat with the Galra.” No one seemed to like that idea much.

Allura looked on with a tight frown. No one dared say a word until she said something.

This was not great news, but on the bright side, they knew that Lance had _probably_  escaped. If he was in his cruiser, he had a pretty good shot at fighting back, as long as he wasn't outflanked. Fingers fucking crossed.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Keith and Lance landed their respective spacecraft on Tajny about twenty hours later.

 

Keith warned him, before they touched down on the safe planet, that not many people around here had ever seen Keith – and even those who had heard of him didn't entirely believe that a Galra was the driving force behind this little planet of  war refugees. More of a go-between, really, between the Galra forces and the safety of Planet O, otherwise called Osvoboni.

“I come and go, I bring prisoners here to recuperate before they can move on, and I never leave the jet,” Keith explained. “No one’s ever seen me. Only the prisoners. What the others know about me, they know by their word alone. They might not trust me at first.”

Lance snorted. “And that’s where I come in, I assume.”

“I hear tell that the Blue Paladin is quite the people person.”

“Well, ya heard right.”

A sigh echoed through the comms. “Great. Just make sure I don’t get my head blasted off by some unsuspecting refugee, got it?” Keith made it sound like a joke, but the reality was a little bleaker than that. If only a handful of people knew the truth about the rogue prince, then it was more than likely an angry ex-prisoner would have a bone to pick with anyone who had yellow eyes and purple skin. “I sent a signal for a request to land. Nixys will meet us when we get there.”

"Nix-iss?" Lance repeated.

“An old friend. Met her when I first found this place, six years ago during a scouting mission. It was just her, her daughter, and a few other Tajnyans scattered here and there. Nix pretty much runs this part of the Red Alliance.”

“The _Red Alliance_ _,”_ Lance breathed, feeling a thrill of excitement. "That's the resistance?"

"It's the most official one there is."

Lance had heard stories, obviously, mostly from Rolo and Nyma, about little bases scattered every which way, hidden throughout the galaxies. Little ones, and nothing with a name or a legitimate leader.

But this sounded like legit resistance, with a legitimate base and safe planets.

Why had Voltron never heard about this?

Rolo. Nyma. _Those secretive little assholes._ Helpful, but still self-preserving. “How many of you are there, in the resistance?”

Keith’s response was immediate. “Oh, somewhere in the thousands,” he said. “This planet is just a rest stop, and there are more along the way, _and_ each is harder to find than the first. Planet O isn’t just the universe’s best-kept secret. It’s hard to find and more populous than ten grade-A Galra warships combined.”

“Holy bejeezus,” Lance muttered, “that’s a lot of people.”

 Just then his screen blinked, pulling up an image of a mass off in the distance. The image grew as they continued to fly.

That must be it, the little blue sphere on his screen. Keith was right, Tajny really _was_ a small planet. Did it even classify as a planet? It couldn’t have been any bigger than Pluto.

 

There was no resistance when the jet and the cruiser entered the planet’s atmosphere. Nothing attacked them.

So far, so good.

Lance was already feeling a little anxious when they touched down.

He didn’t like this. He also didn’t have a choice, but that was nothing new.

“Shutting the comms off in a minute,” Keith said. “I think it’d be better if you got out of your cruiser first. I’ll follow behind. Nix should be here soon.”

“Copy that,” said Lance.

After a beat, he switched off the screen covering half of the window.

It was still light out. Outside, the land was pretty barren, rocky, and the dirt was tinted a weird indigo. Lance could see a campfire smoking a little ways off. At least, Lance assumed it was a campfire, catching sight of the contained flames. The only thing that threw him was the fact that the flames were green. But it was kind of far away, so he might just be seeing things.

A movement on the other side of the cockpit window caught his attention.

There was a person coming towards them. They were shorter than Lance, with thicker legs and an equally thick middle. Lance caught sight of human features, but the dark skin appeared to be coated in various places with something that looked like… scales? They were translucent, and sort of reminded Lance of fish scales.

Or maybe the scales on a spiny lizard, like the ones out in the California deserts.

A suit of what looked like very outdated grey CosMesh covered most of her body, skintight and reaching up to where her neck met her chin. Her features were sharp and angled, with tiny ears, a distinct nose that poked itself out far past her face and a wide, thin mouth. Her dark hair, colored like pitch with overtones of seaweed, was cropped close to her head. Lance couldn’t read her expression. If he had pick one, he would go with worried.

Hopefully, this was the person Keith had been talking about. Nixys.

Steeling himself, Lance listened for the _click_ of the comms shutting off, then brought a gloved hand over the button that opened the airlock.

The airlock hissed, and the door extended outward. Lance stood up from the pilot seat to make his way out the door, checking to make sure his helmet was secured and the oxygen pressure was calibrated.

When he stepped down the incline, the lizard woman’s eyes went wide.

“You’re not Keith,” the woman pointed out immediately. 

 _Wow, nothing gets past her,_ Lance thought. “No… I came here with him, though.”

“Why are you flying your own spacecraft?"

Lance didn't have an answer to that.

Slitted eyes flickered up and down, looking at the battered blue and white suit Lance wore, and her expression went lax. "You are the Blue Paladin."

After hesitating a tick, Lance nodded quickly. _But how did she know that?_

"Keith accompanied you here?” She didn’t sound so surprised anymore. But Lance nodded. “Why isn’t he getting off of his jet?”

Oh, right. Lance was supposed to give him the all-clear. He clicked his comms back on.

“Hey, you were right,” Lance murmured, keeping his eyes locked with Nixys’s bright, slitted ones. The yellow irises were not unlike the Galra, but at least she had sizeable pupils. He actually knew when he was looking her in the eye. She didn't blink much. “Your friend is here. She’s asking where you are. Get off your jet, idiot.”

A pause, and then some static. Lance hit the button and tried again. “Hey, princess purple, get off your jet. Do you copy?”

Keith answered from his side, quietly. “I don’t know if I can.”

Lance’s hand froze at the button that was meant to switch his mouthpiece back on. Something was wrong.

He frowned, looking at Nixys, a look of worry matching the lizard woman’s tenfold. “I don’t think he can make it off the jet,” Lance said carefully, watching for Nixys’s reaction.

The woman blinked, and then she was suddenly a yard ahead of Lance, moving fast as she hurried straight past Lance’s cruiser for the red jet, bare footed with curled toes digging into the dirt. The door had yet to open. Keith wasn’t coming out.

“Was he injured?” Nixys asked Lance from up ahead. Lance hurried to catch up.

“Oh, y-yeah." Lance mentally slapped himself. "Back on the warship we came from.”

“What do you mean?” the woman turned on her heel to face Lance, who screeched to a halt to avoid running into her. “On the warship? Who hurt him?”

“A-a sentry, I think? It happened pretty fast.”

Nixys turned around and continued towards the jet, faster this time.

Keith’s jet was parked not far from the cruiser. Nixys made it in under thirty seconds. Lance kept pace just next to her.

“So Keith has been found out,” Nixys assumed, looking grave with her narrowed reptile eyes.

Lance swallowed. He wasn’t sure if she would get angrier if he answered yes. The woman seemed to take it as an affirmative as she stepped up to the cockpit of the jet and knocked solidly against the windscreen.

“Open up,” she said, firm and clear. “Keith! Let me in, let me help you.”

Nothing. Nixys rapped harder on the window. “Keith! Open the damn airlock, you halfwit purple bastard!”

Lance winced. _Ouch_. Hadn't Keith told him that Nixys was a friend?

 _Finally,_ the airlock hissed and opened, stairs extending down to allow Nixys onboard the jet. Lance was right behind her.

 

Keith sat slumped in the pilot’s chair, breathing hard. His eyes were closed.

Nixys was at his side in a heartbeat. Lance gave her a minute, but Keith looked… um, he looked pretty awful. What looked like a torn piece of black CosMesh was pressed loosely under one hand at his injured side. He’d obviously been trying to staunch the bleeding that way.

If things hadn’t looked so bad, Lance would have pointed out that CosMesh was probably one of _the_ worst things to mop up blood with, considering it was pretty darn hydrophobic and didn't absorb shit. But that was an argument for a later time.

Right now, Keith looked like he was going to keel over if he didn’t get help soon.

With a groan, he allowed the lizard woman to sling one arm over her shoulder, and she lifted him up onto wobbly legs. He didn’t look like he’d be able to make it far.

“There’s a medical tent in the camp,” Nixys said gently, “we’ll get you there. You,” her attention turned to Lance, “help me move him.”

Lance opened his mouth to tell her that he had a _name_ , thanks, but he swallowed the sentence when he took in the rest of Keith’s appearance. Did he say awful? Now Lance thought the guy just looked like straight up hell.

Lavender skin had paled to mauve, and Lance finally caught sight of the exposed injuries when Keith dropped the balled up CosMesh.

A few bruises, all varying degrees of blue and purple. Then there were cuts, just a few and not very deep, peppered along his ribs.

The one that caught Lance’s eye was the messy gash opening up the skin like someone had tried to claw their way through, but with branding irons instead of fingers. Laserfire. A blaster had done that.

"How many of you are there? Who else is injured?" Nixys asked.

"It's just us," said Lance.

"Just you? No others?" the woman looked skeptical. She started to hiss something, but Keith intervened. Nixys and Lance both snapped their attention to him.

"There was no time to rescue the Paladin _and_ gather more prisoners,” Keith said, breathing harder with the added effort of standing. “We were kind of on a tight schedule— we had no choice."

"You mean to tell me that there are even more prisoners back on your ship, waiting for a rescue." The lizard woman looked incredibly unhappy.

"I said we had no choice," Keith grit out, before he hissed and brought a hand to his side. The woman caught the movement and followed it, putting a sturdy arm beneath Keith’s.

Lance frowned. More prisoners? Of course there were always more prisoners. What, had Lance been a detour?

No, he realized as Keith explained tiredly, "A Voltron Paladin is a dangerous thing in the hands of the Galra. If they managed to get information out of him, the universe is in more trouble than you can imagine."

“They didn’t get anything,” Lance insisted quietly. “You can bet your sweet ass I kept my trap shut.”

“Must’ve been hard for you,” Keith said, joking, even though he was clearly in pain. “With the way you yammer nonstop, I’m amazed they needed to call an official interrogation.”

Lance felt his cheeks grow hot at the comment. “You looking for a fight, mullet man?” he snapped.

Keith raised his eyebrows, nonchalant. “Just making an observation.”

“The _hell_ you are…”

Nixys hissed. “You two! Enough. Blue man, give me a hand if you want your friend to live.”

“He’s not my…”

Nixys shot him a stern look.

Lance reluctantly shut up long enough to step over by Keith’s side, where he followed Nixys’s example as he slung another arm under Keith’s to hold him up. With the added support, Keith wasn’t too heavy. His armor was, though.

“Camp isn’t far. A few minute’s walk, down past the bonfire.” Nixys nodded to Lance, and together the three of them made their way down the cockpit steps and onto the indigo desert ground.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lance saw Keith biting his lip. Probably trying not to moan in agony… Lance felt guilty all over again. Fine, all right, Keith had helped him escape, he'd taken a shot to the side in the process, for god's sake. He'd sacrificed his rank, his job, and possibly his title. Prince Keith Kogane might not even hold the privilege of being called "your highness" ever again. Respect? Ha. What respect? He’d given up a lot so that Lance could get out of that warship. And he was still sort of acting like a total dick.

But it was probably still in Lance’s best interests to keep the guy alive. Just… because. Yeah. Just because.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Shiro heaved, shaking on his hands and knees in the middle of the arena. 

He couldn't stop shaking.

Maroon flecks stained the ground where his metal fingers curled against the arena floor. His prosthetic was the only thing that wasn't trembling uncontrollably.

 

"The Champion wins again!" boomed the voice. It hurt Shiro's ears, like someone was speaking through a microphone and directly into his skull. Breathe in... breathe out... 

Breathe in... breathe out... breathe... breathe...

 

"We will now move on to the seventh round...." 

 

 


	10. We Are Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The game just got a whole lot bigger now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tfw your faculty strikes for three days and then you have the weekend right afterwards to write stuff.
> 
> But anyway, here's the latest installment! Thought I'd post it since, let's face it, who knows when I'll be able to get to this again. Schedule is busy busy busy. But I love this story, so I think I'll keep it XD Thank you to everyone who has shared your support and commentary. As always, it means the world <3
> 
> Also, if anyone wants to message me directly (can be totally unrelated to PM&BH) hit me up on [tumblr](http://animationfanatic.tumblr.com/)!

Hunk and Pidge were in the Headquarters’ main workshop, and neither one could bring themselves out of their work long enough to leave for a quick meal. Luckily for Hunk, he’d brought snacks.

Pidge was busy with modifications. Hunk was studying blueprints. He was the first to break the silence.

 

“The Galra prince helped Lance escape," he muttered, toying with a welding torch but not actually using it. "I’m still not over this.”

Pidge snorted. “I know." Her eyes were glued to her work, but for once, she sounded invested in the conversation. "It sounds just like Lance’s kind of luck. I wonder if he’s still got a thing for that purple dick, or if he finally came to his senses.”

“Iunno,” Hunk shrugged, “maybe this Keith guy _is_ actually a rebel. Like the broadcasts said?”

He could see Pidge's shoulders tensed, her brow furrowed, her eyes hooded. Her mouth puckered in a dubious pout, thoughtful as she searched through one of the toolboxes near the worktable. This worktable, along with one other, had since been claimed by Pidge as her own. Nobody else dared use either table but her.

“Right, because _one_ Galra soldier would be stupid enough to try and go against an entire warship – after helping a top-security prisoner escape from his cell. And of _course_ they’d somehow -  _some_ how -actually manage to pull the whole thing off." She shook her head, huffing as a flyaway tuft of hair fell into her eyes. She blew it away distractedly. "I bet the Galra take us for idiots.”

“What do you mean?” Hunk pulled his attention away from the papers.

Pidge rolled her eyes as she continued to search for something, filling the otherwise quiet workshop with the _clink clank_ of wrenches hitting screwdrivers hitting platinum bolts. “I _mean,_ I think that prince Keith Kogane is a spy and a ploy to draw us out." Something heavy clanged against the bottom of the toolbox. "Either he’s luring us into a trap, assuming we’re able to pull up his coordinates soon, or he’s going to play this ‘rebel’ card for however long it takes to gain our trust, get some information out of us, and then stab us in the back.”

Another  _clink clank_ from the toolbox, before she finally pulled out another wrench and a miniscule pair of tweezers. The tweezers looked better suited for plucking super-fine eyebrows than for tinkering with techware, but whatever. 

“You never know, though…” Hunk was fiddling with the welding torch, but not actually doing anything with it. He was thinking hard. “What’s the harm in thinking positively about this?"

Bless him. 

Pidge didn't answer.

"I mean, come _on.”_ He waved the torch around. “Think about it! Think about how freaking _huge_ it would be to have one of those guys— on _our_ side. They could have some serious insider’s info on Zarkon’s inner circles.”

Pidge shook her head. “There’s no way. It’s just… unrealistic.” She caught the downcast look on Hunk’s face. Her own expression gentled. “Look… I know it sounds great, but the Galra— they’re heartless, Hunk. They took my brother and my father and you _know_ this."

It was Hunk's turn to remain silent.

"We know for a fact that they experiment on their prisoners – hell, Shiro is walking, talking proof of that." The next  _clank_ was the wrench in Pidge's hand falling a little too hard onto the worktable.

“What about Lance’s cruiser?” Hunk pointed out, refusing to give up the argument. Even if Pidge did have some pretty fair points. “Lance’s cruiser got out of there, not just the prince’s.”

“Hunk, we don’t even know if it _is_ Lance in that cruiser,” Pidge said, but she winced when Hunk’s eyes widened, taken aback by the harshness in her voice, uncharacteristic of her for such a private conversation. Pidge was angry. That was fair.

She was suspicious, and that was plenty fair, too.

But there was _always_ a chance—a chance for the enemy race to have one or two exceptions. A chance that their teammate was in good hands, that he was free and on the run…

Realistic?

Not so much.

But was it possible? Yeah, yeah, it was. Hunk hoped so.

“Could just be a sentry. Or worse,” Pidge shuddered, “another Galra. Like Sendak.”

“Crooked bastard,” Hunk nodded along, still cross-legged on the workshop floor. He set the welding torch down finally, realizing he didn't actually need it in order to look over blueprints. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.”

Pidge hummed and wrenched a spare bit of something out of the gearbox. “Guess so. Soon as this signal hopper is all modified, I can finally test this sucker out.” With that, she hopped over a couple piles of junk parts, toeing her way through some scattered rivets until she reached the main worktable.

On the table sat a very small, very compact piece of workmanship – this was Pidge’s new and improved signal hopper, a prototype that could very well be a game changer in the field of search-and-rescue. Oh, and tracking people across the universe.

People like Lance and Shiro, as long as Pidge could leapfrog over all the right signals.

This would be possible, of course, assuming that Lance and Shiro were still wearing a bit of gear that _could_ be tracked.

The last few attempts for a signal hopper had been complete failures, not disastrously so but definitely not exceptional work by any standard – but Pidge downright refused to let a few bumps (or a few minor explosions) stop her from getting it right. Fuck the system, she was going to find a way around this, whether or not it was taking science to a new extreme.

The latest model that sat before her closely resembled a Walkman— mostly because that was exactly what she'd used for the casing. But it wasn't  _quite_ your average Walkman anymore.

Inside, wiring and a fair bit of complicated, custom handiwork to rival Altean technology made up the inner workings of the signal hopper, woven with strings of precious metal and bits of charged up crystals. And a triple A battery she’d found stashed in one of her jacket pockets.

“If Lance is anywhere in this galaxy or the next, we’ll find him.”

Hunk’s mouth pinched at the corners, a smile that wasn’t entirely invested. “You’re the best, Pidge.”

“I know.” Pidge waved off the compliment, focused and intense. She didn’t like being distracted for long if she could help it... Nothing personal. Hunk didn't take it personally, at least.

If anything, he took that as his signal to get back to his blueprints. There was a _lot_ to review.

A headquarters that was set up in a ten thousand-year-old castle didn’t come without its bumps and blunders. Not to mention all the dust.

Lance normally made sessions like this a little more interesting, even if Hunk ended up more distracted by Lance’s off-key singing and criticisms about the messiness of the workshop than anything. Hunk missed his crazy sniper friend.

He missed having that dipshit whining in his earpiece about how the wind on this planet or that was throwing off his aim, or how freaking amazing it would be if there was a planet where mermaids existed. Or how much he missed home. How much he missed his family. And _Hunk was_ his family. So was the rest of Voltron, now that they'd been together for so long, gone through so much side by side.

Hunk and Pidge were the only two Paladins left together. The others were, as far as they could figure, lost.

Not dead. Just lost.

Hunk wanted to think there was a chance. But things weren’t exactly looking up. This was still war.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Coran found the two holed up in the workshop a few hours later.

Pidge was still fiddling, Hunk was still reviewing blueprints – not to mention redprints – and to say that their silence had Coran worried would be an… understatement.

Uncle Coran to the rescue.

He cleared his throat. Hunk looked up. Pidge continued to fiddle.

“Hey Coran,” Hunk said, waving with his free hand. The other was busy holding a pencil over one of the newer blueprints, something for a satellite.

“Hello Hunk. Pidge.”

Pidge hummed in greeting. She was a little distracted.

“How are you two? Been holding up all right?”

Pidge hummed again but still didn’t look up. When she was in the zone, there was no getting her out if she didn’t want out.

“Doing just fine, Coran,” Hunk said, smiling gratefully for the distraction as he set aside another print. “How are things with Allura? Is she still talking with Nyma, or did she and Rolo take off?”

“Rolo and Nyma are still here,” Coran confirmed, nodding solemnly. “Not much else to be heard of prince Kogane and his runaway partner.”

“We’re calling them partners, now?” Pidge muttered from her work station. Hunk _humph_ ed.

Scratching the back of his head, Coran laughed lightly. “Well, it does appear to have been a team effort, as far as getting off that warship was concerned.” He caught the looks on the their faces. He sighed. “I know it’s hard, being split up like this,” he said, gentle, but neither Paladin in the room said anything. “But it’s very likely that this radio alert will be a lead on Lance.”

“His cruiser, you mean,” Pidge clarified.

Coran frowned. “Yes, yes I suppose... did I miss something?” He looked at Hunk. Hunk pointed a quick finger at Pidge.

Pidge shook her head as her tongue peeked out between her teeth, a sign that she was getting somewhere with her work. She set aside her tiny wrench and picked up the pair of tweezers. The little tongs twisted jerkily as she prodded at a bit of wiring. “Using his cruiser is just a ploy. I already talked about it with Hunk,” she said, sounding a little less patient . Taking a rare moment to set down her tools, she brought up a free hand to adjust the glasses on the bridge of her nose. Her other hand tapped fingers absently on the worktable.

Coran tried for a different approach.

“Might I ask what you’re working on?” he asked, nodding at Hunk’s blueprints. His hands were clasped behind his back, but his shoulders were relaxed. The Paladins got the message: Coran was here on friendly business, not business business.

Hunk nodded, happy to change the subject. “I’m looking at some of the headquarters’ old blueprints. Pidge and I were talking about repairing the particle barrier.”

“Again,” Pidge added from her spot.

Lips pressed together, Hunk didn’t say a thing to deny it.

Pidge let up on the defensive. She set down the tweezers and picked up a screwdriver that had since been added to the pile on her table. She turned the little tool in her hand carefully, securing the last of the rivets and with a smirk, tapped the Walkman casing with the butt end of the screwdriver.

“Done!” she announced.

Coran strolled over to Pidge’s worktable, carefully avoiding the piles of spare parts and reams of paper with half-scrawled equations on them. He had to lean over to get a better look, and his expression turned curious. “Ahh… what is this?” he asked.

“This,” Pidge said, extending her hands dramatically over the Walkman, waving them around, “is Froggy!”

Coran blinked. Hunk stopped what he was doing to give Pidge a perplexed look. “Uh... Froggy?”

Pidge nodded. “Yup! That’s his name.”

“Um…?”

Pidge sighed. “Signal hopper? _Hopping_?” Her look was pointed. She canted her head sideways and beheld her newest creation with pride. “Froggy.”

“Very nice, very nice,” Coran looked much more excited than Hunk, and Pidge appreciated it. “So this is the famous signal hopper you’ve been talking about at meals for the past few weeks, I take it?”

“The one and only.”

“Excellent.” The look on Coran’s face mellowed out. “And does it work?” he asked.

That was exactly the question Pidge was hoping he would ask. “Not sure yet, but there’s only one way to find out!” She reached over to tap the power button on the Walkman— the signal hopper.

Froggy.

Whatever.

“Gentlemen and… gentlemen,” Pidge snorted, “gather round, we have a special treat in store for the members of Voltron. Behold!”

With one last prompting, Hunk finally set his papers down and sidled over to the table to join Coran in the spectating.

As the three watched, the screen on the Walkman blinked to life, a green background with a logo shaped like a pair of glasses – Pidge’s glasses – decorating the background in navy blue.

The word “ _Gunderware_ ” typed itself across the little screen, just below the logo.

Hunk snickered, staring at the software logo in delight. “ _Gunderware?”_ he asked, trying to hide another snort. Coran looked bemused, but not quite so understanding.

Even Pidge had a little smile on her face. She also looked damn exhausted, but at least she seemed happier now.

It was only now that Hunk was noticing all of the empty cups strewn over the various surfaces of Pidge’s work area. Fucking caffeine monster.

“I thought it was funny,” Pidge said, shrugging.

“It’s hilarious!” Hunk reaffirmed wholeheartedly, eyes scanning the little device with a twinkle in his eye. “Clever, too."

“I don’t understand,” Coran said.

“It’s nothing,” said Pidge.

“Can I…?”

Pidge immediately swatted Hunk’s hand away, before he could press any of the buttons. “Love you man, but no touching.” Hunk’s shoulders slumped as he pouted, but kept his hands to himself, as per Pidge’s assertive request. “Let’s see if this thing really works.... I mean, I’m like ninety-nine point nine percent sure it works, but since I’m only human I  _guess_ there’s always that possibility..” that it could fail, Pidge didn’t say.

But Pidge knew her shit. And she _knew_ that she knew her shit. So she was pretty sure.

“All righty, let’s test this froggy out,” Hunk said.

Pidge nodded with enthusiasm, rubbing her hands together like a magician before her opening act. Even Coran seemed excited, watching Pidge get all pumped up for one of her projects.

This project would be a game-changer for Voltron. If it worked.

It would work.

“What are we looking for?” Pidge asked, looking from one man to the other for suggestions.

“Kerberos,” Hunk said immediately.

A dark look flashed across Pidge’s face, but she hid it well.

But after a moment, it was gone. She cleared her throat. “Okay then. Kerberos it is.”

She tapped in a command at the touch-screen. The logo in the top right-hand corner blinked, and disappeared. The screen went black.

 

Then it went blue. Navy blue.

Universe blue.

Across the screen, little white dots blipped and blinked. The screen scrolled itself left, then up, passing over the little dots faster and faster until the dots were blurring by so fast that they were lines on the screen.

Pidge and the others watched with bated breath.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

The signal hopper’s test run hailed successful results.

 

Froggy managed to find Kerberos in less than thirty seconds.

 

It was a record that, as far as Coran knew (and that Allura would later confirm) was unbeaten, except, perhaps, by the Galra Empire. And _they_ had been around for millennia.

The signal hopper’s blue screen showed one dot, blown up to be seen clearly, and in one of the top corners the little moon’s coordinates sat, staring back at the trio in neat white text.

Coran’s expression was pleased, but gravely serious as well. “Voltron is certainly an enormous step closer to working on a level playing field with the Galra. If we can track Lance throughout the universe—”

“Then what’s stopping us from tracking other things?” Pidge interjected, practically shaking with excitement. “We can’t be traced, our signal is clean, and our code is un-hackable!”

“Really?” Hunk asked, a little more wary. He scooched past Coran to get a better look at the compact piece of tech, eyes narrowed. “Untraceable _and_ un-hackable? There’s no such thing.”

“Not until now,” Pidge insisted. Her eyes were enormous. Hunk knew she was ecstatic, he wouldn't _dare_ argue now.

“If that’s true,” Hunk murmured, suddenly eyeing the signal hopper with a new level of respect, “then this could be-”

“Huge,” Pidge finished for him. Her gaze for the signal hopper was almost loving. “Froggy here can help us track just about anyone is this galaxy, or the next, or the next, and so on. And nobody would be able to trace us back without our say so.”

“ _Your_ say so,” Hunk corrected, grinning wide. “Pidge… this is all thanks to you. _This,”_ he gestured to the Walkman like it was the Hope Diamond, “this is freaking amazing.”

“Aww Hunk,” Pidge grinned sheepishly, shrugging beneath the layers of pajama and CosMesh. She hadn’t removed the mesh armor since Lance’s failed mission. And she wasn’t getting rid of it now – she was going to be prepared for anything, dammit (Fine, she would shower, but they would have to be quick showers). She was _not_ going to let another family member be taken away right under her nose. “It wasn’t _all_ me. I mean, a lot of it was – but you totally helped.”

Hunk laughed, and so did Pidge, accepting the pat on the back from Coran as they all watched the little white dot blink, realizing what this could mean for all of them.

It was nice to know that she still had a little family looking out for her, even if her first one was lost in the ethers of the universe. But now she had a far, far better chance of finding them.

 


	11. Queen of Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nixys is the best wing-woman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so loooong - and this time it really has been a long time, I'm sorry guys! I've been a little bogged down by midterms (and I added a major because I live to make my life more complicated than it needs to be XD ). I plan on getting more writing done over break and also over winter break, but between all that time... I probably won't be posting much. I've got other projects that I'm working on - not to mention a new Voltron project ;) Fingers crossed I get it all done! For now, enjoy! Much love, and thank you for reading!

“How is he?”

Lance had only stayed a few minutes in the camp, watching as Nixys helped Keith the rest of the way to the medical tent, before he returned to his own cruiser alone. He had some repairs to do. His baby wasn’t going to wait forever. Neither was his team.

It had been a few hours. The numbers on the clock programmed to standard Earth time in his wrist cuff read **6:30 p.m.** It felt like so much later. What Lance could really use was a nice, heavy, dreamless sleep.

“He’ll live,” Nixys said, arms crossed as she stood in the doorway of the cockpit. Lance had since fixed a few minor bugs in the system, found a change of CosMesh (and an extra T-shirt, which was nice), and re-wired one of the heating control boards that had been battered in the firefight. He stopped the repairs to give the lizard woman his attention.

“Oh. That’s uh, good.”

Nixys raised a thin eyebrow. “How happy you sound.”

Lance kind of felt like he’d stuck a hairdryer in his mouth and set it on high. Nothing went down when he tried to swallow, but he could feel his adam’s apple bobbing and he knew that Nixys was not doing anything for his anxiety.

“Keith tells me your name is Lance?” she asked.

Lance nodded. “Ah yyyep, that’s me. Stealth specialist and marksman of team Voltron, I guess.”

“You don’t sound very proud,” Nixys commented, looking bored with Lance’s answer. “You’re not proud of that?”

Wasn’t he? Lance didn’t really know anymore. His whole world had been kinda sorta been flipped upside down this past week so… that was a super good question, and one that he didn’t have a straight answer to.

Apparently the indecision on his face was enough for Nixys, because she suddenly reached a spindly hand out and grabbed him by the elbow. Lance yelped, but resisted the instinct to fight back. He wasn’t _that_ much of an idiot.

“Come with me,” said Nixys, “Keith is still sleeping down in the medical tent. Let’s take a walk down there, shall we?”

It seemed unwise to argue with her. “Hey, you’re the boss,” Lance answered.

These past few days had really been testing him. He was being forced to trust a lot of people that he hardly knew (if he knew them at all), some of whom he’d been taught never to trust. See: Keith Kogane.

 

“I met Keith when he was thirteen, just a child,” Nixys said. “During a Galra rite of passage, he flew to one of Tajny’s moons and remained there for what he told me was nearly a month, before I found him during a scouting mission. He’d been surviving with only a few drops of water left from his rations and some roots native to the moon, roots that kill you slowly if you eat enough of them. The little idiot wouldn’t have made it back if I hadn’t brought him here. And then the bugger left for his little army, to prove he had survived.”

She called him names so often, Lance was beginning to notice. But she used the name-calling fondly, like most close friends often did. Lance tried to imagine only having one friend in the universe who gave a damn about you. No family. Just the one person, that was it.

He _couldn’t_ imagine it.

“I heard nothing from him for a year. When he came back, it wasn’t for very long.” Nixys’s gaze was straight ahead, where the bonfire smoked and crackled. They were close enough that Lance could hear it now. “He brought Tajny its first group of refugees. We’ve been a base for the resistance ever since. Because of Keith.”

“You helped him,” Lance said. “A Galra.”

Nixys _hmphh_ ed and continued to lead the way. It was getting dark already. “He’s not like the rest of them.”

“He’s half human, isn’t he?” Lance said before he could stop himself.

Nixys slowed, but didn’t stop. “Yes… I guess it’s easy for you to tell,” she said, “being a human yourself?”

“The first time I saw him, I knew he was different.”

“When did you first see him?” Her voice was curious, lighter and less intense than before. Nixys was a little scary, in her way, but she wasn’t a bad person. She gave off those ‘cool aunt’ vibes, the kind of person who didn’t mind listening to your problems over a glass of wine, and who also wasn’t afraid to tell you to cut the shit when you were starting to doubt yourself.

Lance’s head fell a little. They kept walking, but he was in no hurry to get to that medical tent. “Back on the warship,” he muttered, “about a week ago, I think.”

“I forgot to ask, but how did you get there in the first place?” She didn’t sound accusatory. She just sounded genuinely interested.

Lance almost didn’t want to say why he’d been on that ship in the first place.

But he figured honesty was the way to go, with someone like Nixys.

“My um… my director sent me to kill him.”

That brought about a good minute of silence between them as they walked. They were coming up on the bonfire, Lance could make out the silhouettes of a few more people (lizard people? He couldn’t tell, their backs were all to him). All wore the same outdated CosMesh, sat on the same little benches made from what looked like scrap metal, and all had their hair cropped very close to their heads. He wondered if they were refugees, or if they were locals.

He wondered if Tajny actually _had_ locals.

“Why didn’t you do it?” Nixys finally asked.

Lance wasn’t sure if she was being serious or not. He answered honestly, anyway.

“I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

Lance shook his head, running a hand down his face, and suddenly he was at a loss for words. They passed the bonfire slowly. Either the people sitting by the fireside didn’t notice them, or didn’t care. “There was this… weird moment, where I could swear he looked around and looked _right at me._ ” He laughed, amazed. “I could _swear_ he saw me, but he didn’t say anything.” Nixys was giving him a funny look. Lance ignored it, and kept talking. “Later on he told me that he’d…”

“He’d what?”

“He said he’d heard me, sitting there in my hiding place the entire time, but he still didn’t say anything. He could’ve ousted me right there. Or had me killed.”

He could hear a smile creeping into Nixys’s voice when she answered, “Yet he didn’t.”

“He told me that he’d been expecting me to find a way out, before I was caught. He knew I wouldn’t kill him because I’d already hesitated for so long.”

“You still haven’t explained _why_ you decided not to kill him.”

Lance shrugged again.

Lance hadn’t killed him because…?

Because Keith was different? That sounded stupid. But Keith _was_ different. And not only that but Keith’s records had been so freaking _vague_ on his activity in the arenas, the prisoner trafficking and the various disappearances. The only solid background that Lance had actually received during the briefing was Keith’s military status, royal status, and history of pilot training and experience in the army. The guy was plenty accomplished.

And maybe it was a little prejudiced to think like this, but it was also a lot harder to kill someone who looked way more human than the rest of the enemy.

“I didn’t kill him because there wasn’t a solid basis for doing it. There wasn’t enough evidence to support that he was a serious threat.”

Humming quietly, Nixys picked up the pace. Lance hurried to follow. Off in the distance, the outline of a camp came into focus. One of the tents was longer than the others, spanning three of the regular ones. At first glance, Lance had thought It was a tent used for meetings. Now he knew that this was medical tent, having watched Nixys help Keith hobble through the entryway before shutting the flap of canvas.

After another minute of the conversation dwindling to nothing, in which Lance wondered when he’d get to eat a meal next (and maybe get back to his cruiser for a shower) Nixys broke the silence. “You’re more honorable for doing what you did, Lance. Or... what you didn’t do. And I appreciate that you didn’t kill my friend,” she said. “I don’t have many. And he’s a good friend to have when you’re fighting a war.”

Lance didn’t answer. But he did keep the information in mind.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Keith looked better than before, lying in the cot.

The tent looked a lot bigger from the inside, and everything smelled clean, which was a good sign. Keith's cot was sectioned off from the rest of the tent by canvas on either side. Maybe it was to give him some privacy - but something in Lance told him that _maybe_ it was there to keep Keith's presence a secret. It didn't seem likely that a resistance base would respond positively to a Galra soldier, rogue or not. Lance remembered what Keith had told him earlier about bringing in refugees: he never actually left the jet during those secret missions. And no one here but Nixys had seen his face.

Even if Nixys had told the others about Keith, Lance doubted that everyone would take her word for it.

He wondered how things were going to play out from here. If Keith would be accepted, or turned away. Honestly, Lance knew what he'd do if put in that situation, if he hadn't met Keith the way he had.

Now, though... he'd probably fight to keep Keith here.

Lance didn’t really know what a healthy color should be for a Galra, but if he had to guess, he’d say that Keith was close to it. His cheeks looked a little more colored, and his breathing was even. He looked harmless. But Lance knew this wasn’t the case.

Lance tugged at the hem of his t-shirt. The sleeves were long enough to reach past his wrists and the material was a dark blue, dark like space, with nothing but a white Voltron logo on the back. It was well-worn and soft, and made him feel a little more at-ease with everything else. He felt warmer now.

The CosMesh was doing a world of good, too; the old suit from the firefight reeked of sweat and made him feel claustrophobic. This suit was the same black material, form-fitting but crazy breathable. He didn’t mind the mesh suit at all – it made him feel protected, just like he felt comforted by the t-shirt.

“I’ll leave you here to talk when he wakes,” Nixys said, before Lance heard the canvas to the entryway flap shut. Lance whirled around to find the woman gone, then turned back around, apprehension pooling in his stomach.

What the hell was he supposed to say?

_Nice job getting yourself shot, dumbass. I thought you were trained for this shit._

Lance wasn’t looking for a fight, thanks. But he was still having a little (okay, a _lot_ ) of trouble wrapping his head around Keith. What he was and what he did were so fucking contradictory, so much so that the very existence of Keith Kogane made little to no sense. It was incredible. Keith Kogane was fucking incredible.

What _should_ Lance say?

A light cough snapped Lance back to reality and the medical tent. Shit, Keith was waking up. Yellow eyes blinked once, twice, three times… then shut again.

 _Thank god._ He’d fallen back asleep.

Just as Lance was about to celebrate the free pass, the eyes snapped open again, focused and wide.

Lance froze when the head turned, and eyes like two weak suns trained themselves right on him. At least, it looked that way. Lance shivered.

“Why’re you here?”

_Oh, so this is how it’s gonna be?_

“Your friend brought me here.”

“Nixys?”

Lance nodded stiffly.

“Why’d she do that?”

“No idea.”

Keith huffed. “Figures.”

“But I can still leave, if you want,” Lance turned on his heel, more than ready to follow through. The rustling of sheets met his ears as he turned. He smirked to himself. Apparently, Keith wasn’t one to give in so easily. _Figures._

“Wait.”

Aaand there it was.

Lance turned back around, adopting a bored look as he examined his nails – anything to keep from looking at the person in the cot. Anything to keep from looking into those eyes. _Lance was not weak. Lance was not going to let one Galra out of a million change his mind about the rest of those monsters._

“We should probably talk,” Keith said. His voice wasn’t nearly as strong as Lance remembered it, but it was leaps and bounds better than what it had been a few hours ago, after landing.

Lance turned with his hands on his hips. "About?"

"About how I'm not as horrible as you think I am."

It was with an enormous amount of self control that Lance refrained from rolling his eyes. "Sure," Lance said, "You can start with all the prisoners that you've apparently left to die at the hands of Zarkon, all because you needed to save  _one_ Paladin. It's not like I was gonna _tell_ them anything, yo."

Keith looked like he wanted to disagree. He bit his tongue.

"I'm sure those prisoners don't see you in a very nice light, don't you think?"

“I _was_ helping them," Keith growled, trying to push himself into a sitting position before grimacing, and deciding it was a fruitless effort. "I helped who I could. This time I had very little choice."

"And you've been helping these prisoners how?" Lance asked. He wasn't trying to goad Keith or provoke him into a fight - Nixys really had been sort of half-assed when she told Lance was Keith had been doing these past six years.

"Getting them away from the arena. Getting them away from Zarkon. Now that the Galra know what I’ve been doing, they’ll see me as weak." Keith waved a restless hand at the rest of him, sheet-covered and, yeah, weak. "An easy target and a mistake, not a Galra. They’ll blame the human part of me, just like you blame the Galra part of me.”

The accusation hit Lance hard. But he wanted something more than that. So he pushed further. “There were a lot of rumors about you. I didn't know which ones to believe - I'm _still_ not sure, to be honest," he said. "The dogfighting and the underground trafficking, your history in the military. The rest of the files were scattered and difficult to track.”

“If those were the files you had on me,” Keith said, shaking his head softly, “then I guess I can’t blame you for thinking I was a total dick.”

“Think lower.”

“The rumors fueled themselves. I played along because they kept me alive. They helped me to get my promotion, helped me earn their trust. I had easier access to the prisoners and it would’ve continued to go well, the missions from the ship to this planet- if you hadn’t shown up at the worst time possible.”

Lance perked up. “Why was it the worst time possible?”

Keith sighed, stretching his legs beneath the sheets. The material looked scratchy and uncomfortable, Lance was happy to have the spare supplies (e.g. a decent blanket) back on the cruiser. Keith looked cold and compromised, and quite possibly the furthest thing from a soldier in his little cot, with an injury that was still healing.

Scratch that, Keith _did_ look like a soldier.

A soldier who was way too young, way too inexperienced (despite his history in the military), and way too emotionally unprepared for the toll that a war demanded.

“All that talk about you, being a dogfighter. That was all it was.”

“Just a lot of big talk, yeah.”

“…Well played.” Lance was impressed. Keith’s files were so vague, it was a relief Lance hadn’t killed him like he was supposed to. The death hardly would have been justified, even if Keith _had_ turned out to be on the other side.

 

A few seconds ticked by. Then a few more. Keith didn’t look like he’d been prepared to say much more than that.

Lance looked around for something to sit on. Spying a stool off in the corner of Keith’s curtained-off section of the medical tent, he grabbed it and set it down a few feet away from the cot, none too eager to get too close.

Keith didn’t want to talk? Fine. Lance could talk plenty.

“I became a sniper just three years ago,” he began, and suddenly he had Keith’s attention again, hook, line and sinker. He kept going, pushing through the prickling feeling on the back of his neck, in his stomach and in his ribs. He rarely talked about his job.

No one at Voltron really talked much about their jobs. They all just sort of… went about their business. Maybe it was because they were all in it together; they all _knew_ that their lives sucked, but being together got them through the worst of it.

It wasn’t like that anymore.

“When I accepted the job, I was ready to help. I joined the garrison back on earth so that I could become a pilot. An explorer. And then… I was brought to Arus. They made me an offer that was pretty damn hard to back down from, especially once I found out how many lives were on the line.”

He took a deep breath. Drawing some comfort from the warmth provided by the long sleeves of his t-shirt, he went on. Keith’s eyes didn't leave him for a second. “I was ready to lessen the threat against those in the universe who were good.”

“Your idea of ‘good’ seems a little skewed, if you ask me,” Keith murmured, wincing a little before he brought a hand to his side, hidden beneath the sheets. Lance knew he was in pain. It wasn’t like they had healing pods in a refugee camp.

Lance frowned, thinking back to his first few months of training, of the briefings and the test missions. Then his first _real_ missions.

“I was sixteen,” he said quietly. “Everything was still pretty black and white to me… I just thought of it as killing the bad guys, saving the good guys, and calling it a day.”

A beat of silence followed the confession.

“Not everything is as clear-cut as that,” Keith murmured, drumming his fingers in his lap, scratchy sheets covering his legs and waist. The rest of him was dressed in what Lance could qualify as civvies. CosMesh and some sort of old shirt counted as civvies if you were a member of Voltron, anyway. Keith’s over-shirt was plain and grey, like the suit that clung to him just beneath.

The people who ran this joint had given him one of their suits. Lance wondered if Keith appreciated it, or if he preferred the newer suits, like the one he'd been wearing under all that Galra armor. These grey ones looked a little thicker, a little less lightweight. Even in the somewhat bulkier CosMesh, Lance realized he'd been right about something: Keith was much slighter than a Galra. He put it from his mind for now.

“I know that now. I didn’t know it then.”

Keith hummed, looking at the makeshift roof of the medical tent.

“You wanna know a secret?”

Keith perked up. His eyes snapped to Lance, who hadn’t moved an inch from the stool next to the bed. “Shoot,” Keith said.

“After my very first kill, I puked my guts out.”

Keith’s eyebrows lifted.

Lance nodded. “Yeah. I was so sick, I felt even worse than Hunk – uh, my friend, I mean – after a test flight in the cruisers.” His laugh was shaky, a poor cover. Not enough to brush it off. _God, he missed them so fucking much, it was beginning to physically hurt._ “And then there were nightmares.”

“That tends to happen after your first time killing someone.”

Keith was talking about this so casually, it was less than reassuring to hear after hoping against hope that maybe Keith was good, that he was as honorable as Nixys made him out to be. He tried not to dwell too much on it.

Lance normally did his best to act like he was over it, like he was stronger than his past and that he was _proud_ of what he did.

But holy shit, he was so fucking ashamed.

“I’ve gotten over them for the most part. The nightmares, I mean,” Lance explained. Keith listened. “After some time, it just became a job that I’d numbed myself to. Or at least I wanted to believe I had. But kids aren’t supposed to go killing people.” He shook his head. Suddenly felt like his airway was constricting.

Breathing kinda hurt, just a little. His heart tapped sadly behind his ribs,  _Hello, is Lance home?_  

“Humans aren’t meant to kill each other. We just fuck up on a daily basis too much to care anymore.”

Lance’s job wasn’t a thing to brag about. It was a nightmare, not something that he could just _get used to,_ no matter how many times he did it.

“I can’t say I haven’t done things that I’m ashamed of, either,” Keith said after a minute of the ringing silence. Lance’s eyes flicked to Keith, from the foot of the cot up to where the lackluster mess of dark hair was plastered to his forehead, or where it fell over the thin pillow.

“Guess we’re not so different then.”

To Lance’s amazement, Keith cracked a grin. It was small, but it was there. “Probably more than you’d think, yeah.”

 

They stayed like that for some time, maybe a few minutes and maybe more than that, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. They both knew.

This was war, and in war, finding someone who could listen, who could _understand,_ that was rare. It was too good to be true. But it was possible.

As if the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, the tent flap rustled behind Lance, and then Nixys was there, a smug look on her face as she crossed her arms, looking from Keith on his cot, to Lance on his stool.

“So... who’s hungry?”


	12. Little Puppets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have... _finally_... updated

_Opponent twenty-five… twenty-six?_

He couldn’t keep track. He didn’t know if it would be better if he _did_ remember, so maybe it was better this way, not keeping track of the opponents facing him one by one until he couldn't remember which was which.

All the challengers so far had been brutal and difficult to defeat, but at least Shiro could put them in a box.

A box, as in, separating these guys from everyone else. Innocent people, human or otherwise. The challengers in the ring had all been nasty and violent, or tricky and sly, or just downright ruthless in some way, shape or form. If Shiro focused, he could separate his emotions from the ring, just about as easily as he’d separated his last opponents leg from the rest of its body. And all he could think of through the thick of it was, _I’m no better than them._

“Champion,” a dead voice droned from behind the little grate, the one which acted like a window between the cell and the rest of the cell block.

Shiro didn’t look up. He was tired. He hadn’t eaten in at least twelve hours, and his buzzing brain wouldn’t let him sleep. Imagine that. Not sleeping because your own body just wouldn’t let you, even when you needed it the most.

“You’ve been called to the arena to fight in one hour.” Just another Galra heavy following orders. Shiro didn’t answer. The person on the other side of the cell door took the silence as answer enough. “Someone will be sent for you then.” No answer. “You will be fed as soon as you have won the next fight.”

The messenger left.

Shiro thought about that. The Galra had made it sound like they already knew he would win.

 _Suddenly so confident that I’ll play their game, aren’t they,_ Shiro thought bitterly. He thought about what Lance might do, in the same situation.

Lance was the last person he’d seen before he was taken here to this new ship and made to endure hell. What was happening to Lance now?

_Probably trying to get a couple of soldiers to listen while he talks about  that time he fell off his parents’ roof and into a pile of leaves in the backyard._

Lance would. The way Lance had told it, that story sounded like the funniest thing. He just had that way - a gift, if you will - for having that innate ability to make everything sound funnier than it probably was in real life. The story had had Hunk on the floor for _days,_ especially once Lance divulged that, not only had he sprained his wrist, he’d done it in front of the entire extended family. And friends. On Thanksgiving day.

Shiro cracked the tiniest smile. Okay, now he _knew_ he’d lost it.

Lance was stubborn, too. And brave. Sometimes a little _too_ brave. That was how he ended up in the stupid messes that he did, at times.

But to be fair, he was still a kid, whether or not Lance himself agreed. Nineteen was still a kid. A legal adult, sure… but still a kid.

The hour passed slowly. There was nothing in the cell to keep him occupied, other than leaning up against the cold wall and counting off the seconds.

His prisoner’s uniform was itchy. The full-body spandex-like suit felt too tight, although it breathed like CosMesh. The greyish, ill-fitting shirt hung loosely on him, slipping a little off one shoulder. He didn’t actually feel like fixing it. The shoes weren’t really shoes, more like rubber-soled socks attached to the rest of the suit, sort of like he was wearing a too-tight onesie.

He counted off another minute, tapping a finger deliberately against the floor. The best thing he could do for himself now was rest, especially when he had another fight to look forward to in one hour.

He wondered what sort of opponent would be facing him this time.

Would they be ugly and heavy, tall or short? Ravenous and built to kill? His third opponent had been that way, towering nine feet tall and built like a brick wall, with three arms and stamina to be envied. Shiro had found a way around that guy, no problem.

Challenger five had been harder. They were more humanoid, somewhere around five foot in height and built closer to a twig than a brick wall. But the thing had been lethal where speed was concerned. Shiro had had to dodge and counter attack after vicious attack, which his opponent delivered like bee stings. Instead of hands, the guy or girl or _neither_ had tapered claws like a crab’s, which they used to jab and block whenever Shiro was close by.

Shiro wondered what had possessed him when he finally took that one down, but he was happy to still be alive.

Maybe “happy” wasn’t the right word.

Shiro was happ _ier_ to be alive than he was to be a smear on the floor of the arena.

He tapped out another minute. Two. He just wanted to sleep.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

The campfire was warm.

The expressions on the faces of the other refugees were _not._

If this was the reception that Lance was getting, then how would these people react when they saw Keith?

Keith, who had muttered something about "not being hungry" when Nixys offered to bring back some food to the medical tent. Lance had been totally content to go to where the grub was at, so he wasn't going to complain.

Seven of the lizard people sat around the fire. Lookouts on duty, Nixys explained before they reached the group. They didn’t look especially attentive, considering they were probably the only lookouts in camp. Or so Lance assumed.

Battered blasters and sharpened knives laid against benches or across laps, closeby and ready to be used. At least these guys were armed to defend themselves.

Lance hoped they didn’t take one look at him and shoot on sight. That’d be super counterproductive.

He caught a whiff of something steaming up from the big, cauldron-ish contraption hanging over the fire by means of two metal poles and a thin chain looped through the handles. Something bubbled and simmered inside, like a soup or something. Lance peered over to try and get a better look. The stuff looked thicker than soup.

Stew, then. He _really_ hoped so. His stomach could use something a little more filling than Galra prison food or freeze-dried emergency rations from the cruiser.

He let Nixys lead him to the only empty bench by the fire, pieced together with scrap metal like the other ones. Nixys sat, and Lance followed suit. A couple bowls were passed around wordlessly. Nixys handed him one. Lance sniffed it, then caught the look on Nixys's face. He forced a smile (which probably looked more like a grimace) and sipped at the stew. No one appeared to use utensils here. 

The stew was okay, although it could use a little more salt and a little less  _tar,_ or whatever the heck they put in the goopy mixture. It would probably stick around inside Lance's intestines for a few days and give him a little acid reflux, but it wasn't totally disgraceful - nothing a few antacids couldn't fix, anyway. Plus, it was filling. He got to work on his food eagerly. He was just starting to realize how hungry he really was, now that he was eating some bizarre, tarry stew that contained clumps of something he reeeally hoped was potato.

“Everyone,” Nixys said, not making eye contact with anyone in the silent group. No one looked up from their bowl. “This is Lance.”

“The Blue Paladin,” a woman sitting across from them said dully. Gold eyes glinted in the green firelight. Lance couldn’t tell while she was sitting down, but the woman was probably even shorter than Nixys, with a wider middle and rounder face. She looked dangerous with her blaster leaning against her leg as she sat and looked from Nixys to Lance. “We’re aware.”

Lance was about to ask _how_ they knew who he was, when another, very skinny woman two away from the first added, “Selli saw him heading to the medical tent and took a look at the docked spacecraft.” She tilted her head in the direction of Lance’s cruiser and Keith’s jet, which were hardly more than dark spots in the distance. The fact that it was getting very dark didn’t help with spotting them.

It was with a nervous twinge that Lance wondered whether or not someone had actually tried to get _into_ his cruiser. God he hoped not.

“Lance,” Nixys pulled Lance out of his thoughts. His eyes snapped from the two spots in the distance, to the two glinting, yellow eyes belonging to Nixys. “This is Kullak,” she gestured to the first woman, the one with the blaster that was bigger than Lance’s head. Lance nodded politely. Kullak scowled.

Then Nixys looked at the second woman with skinny arms and long chin. “And that’s Millie.” A very human name for a non-human, Lance thought.

Millie didn’t smile, but at least she didn’t scowl, either. Lance gave a little wave to both women, forcing a smile of his own.

“Hey,” he said, trying to be polite. He tried for a friendly finger gun, shooting Millie a smile. “I’m Lance.” Aaand then he remembered that Nixys had already introduced him. He also realized that he felt like an ass.

Yeah, this was getting off to a _great_ start.

He looked around the circle of people, all with the same pitch black skin like Nixys and translucent scales running from their temples to either side of their chin. There were five women altogether, excluding Nixys, and two men.

Nixys observed everyone, but didn’t speak much, other than introducing Lance to everyone else. There was Kullak and Millie, along with Jinn and Lisitsa.

Then there were the two men: a tall, stout guy with a wide mouth by the name of Glimpki, and the other, shorter than Lance but even skinnier, called Tee. Tee looked to be around Lance’s age, and he was the quiet type. A little broody, by the looks of it. He didn’t make Lance _un_ comfortable, per se, but Lance wasn’t too keen on getting to know him.

Not that Tee talked enough for Lance to feel the guy out, anyway. He remained silent through the introductions, whilst the others at least nodded or grunted in acknowledgment when their name was given.

It was clear that Nixys was the leader here, but once Lance started paying attention, he realized that Kullak clearly had some power, too. Where Nixys was the cool, reserved aunt, Kullak was the nosy, cranky grandma. An _armed,_ cranky grandma.

“Who is your friend?” the willowy girl, Mille, asked. Lance looked around to face her across the fire.

“My friend?”

She nodded. “The one who came here in the red jet. The one in the medical tent.”

“Oh,” Lance fought the urge to scowl. Keith was not a _friend._ He was… whatever. Keith was whatever, at the moment. “He brought me here. His name’s Keith.”

All eyes snapped up.

Some leveled their gazes at Lance, some at Nixys. Nixys did nothing to reveal any sort of discomfort she might have felt for having five of her own stare her down.

Kullak looked the most intense, but following her by a close second was Tee.

“Keith?” Glimpki, the older of the men, murmured with narrowed eyes. “You don’t mean the ally?” Lance could feel the tension increase tenfold around the campfire.

Kullak’s expression was different. Less curious, more angry. “The Galra?” she hissed. Her eyes weren’t on Nixys - no, they were focused intensely on Lance.

Lance swallowed.

“We’ve all heard about him,” Millie said, quiet as she gave Nixys a pointed look. When Lance turned to look, the woman’s lips were pressed tightly together. “Is it true?” she asked, looking back at Lance with an eager expression. “He’s turned against his own?”

Apparently, everyone was waiting for _Lance_ to explain everything. Not even Nixys herself was there to save his butt this time.

Slowly, Lance nodded. A few of them gasped. He caught the youngest of the group, Tee, glaring straight at the fire. Lance knew the feeling; Galra didn’t just turn against their own. This wasn't _normal_. Galra were all the same, a hive mind, bloodthirsty and ready to follow orders even if it killed them.

He’d thought those thoughts exactly, until...

“Keith is different,” Lance blurted before he could stop himself.

Eyebrows raised.

Even Tee tore his gaze away from the fire to look at him. Lance was really hoping Nixys would have mercy and actually say a word or two to confirm what he was talking about. Apparently, that wasn’t how these guys worked. It was Lance’s word that they were after, not someone’s that they already knew.

“Different how?” the woman next to Millie asked. Lance blinked, before remembering that her name was Jinn.

During introductions, Lance decided he liked Jinn right away. She was _stunning,_ the way you pictured models who walked catwalks for super classy names like Dior or Ralph Lauren. Godly cheekbones and a long neck, a tapered nose, eyelashes to die for. She must have been much taller than Lance, even though they were all sitting down and made it harder to tell.

Jinn’s voice was louder than Nixys’s, but also warmer, inviting. It wasn’t gritty like Kullak’s or timid like Glimpki. To be honest, Lance was having trouble keeping everyone’s names straight.

Jinn was also a little scary, with the long knife laid out across her lap, casual as a kid on Earth toting around a cellphone. Long, narrow feet tapped lightly against indigo ground -- her feet, which were the only parts of her other than her head and hands that weren’t covered up in grey CosMesh.

Sharpened claws like a reptile’s scratched circles in the dirt. Her yellow-gold eyes with slitted pupils stared back at him like they were digging around, looking for the answers to his soul. Or something.

Lance shivered. He found himself liking Jinn a lot from just a quick look and a few words, but she also scared the crap out of him, more so than even Kullak.

He thought about her question. _Different how?_

Biting his lip, Lance wrenched his gaze away from the heavy stare Jinn was giving him. Swallowing again, he answered, “He’s not a spy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The looks that he got from Tee and two of the women told him that that was _exactly_ what they’d been thinking.

“Nixys said he was a friend to the Tajnyans. He's been bringing over refugees for years,” said Jinn, “we trust Nixys’s word. But now that the Galra soldier has set foot on our territory it’s only natural we would suspect-”

“ _Enough_ , Jinn.” Lance silently thanked Nixys for her timing. Jinn looked a little miffed, although she didn’t try to speak again. Thankfully, Nixys had decided it was time for her to take over where Lance had left off. After shooting Jinn a stern look, she turned to address the group as a whole. An especially loud _crrackle_ from the fire sent green sparks spewing into the chilly night air.

A couple years ago, Lance would have jumped at the noise. Now he was numb to it. Numb like he was to the sounds of live fire from his own blaster, or the sounds of other shots ringing out in the heat of a firefight. He just felt kind of numb in general.

“Keith has been our friend for years, Kullak,” Nixys said, keeping a cool head. “He risked his life to get the Paladin out of prison, and also risked it numerous times to bring over sick refugees, whom we healed and cared for. Or did you forget that?”

“He wants our trust,” Kullak spat back, thin mouth twisting in a self-satisfied grin. “He knows everything about the Red Alliance, but now that we have him right in our camp we can _end_ hi-”

“Prince Keith Kogane is the very _reason_ for the Red Alliance,” Nixys argued coolly.

Kullak finally shut her mouth.

“He is here because he was injured severely in the fight that got him _and_ the Blue Paladin out of the warship. Don't you hear what I'm saying?" she asked, entreating. "He can’t return to his own ship." Her words were for everyone this time, not just cranky grandma Kullak. “He’s betrayed his own and committed more treasonous acts against the Galra than anyone else I know. If I say you can trust him, then you can.”

Lance wanted to give this awesome lizard lady a hug. She was so freaking cool. A force to be reckoned with, maybe, but _cool._

Lance heard Kullak scoff. Frowning, he side-eyed her, watching while avoiding eye contact at the same time. Kullak was a one-woman militia, only scarier. “You say he was injured?”

Nixys left her silence hanging in the air as an answer.

Kullak hummed, unconvinced. “I doubt that the Galra brat is any more injured than this one here.” she jabbed a clawed finger towards Lance, who was suddenly a lot more self-conscious about the cuts along one cheek and the sprained ankle that was currently in a splint, thanks to the medical lady down in the camp. The scar on his shoulder was giving him some pain, too, but he hadn't said anything about it. He filed that away in the back of his mind to ask about, next time he went into camp.

Nixys rebutted Kullak easily. “If you had seen him when he landed, you would say otherwise.”

The thin, high eyebrows on the heavyset woman raised even higher. “Is that so?”

“Go to the medical tent and see for yourself,” Nixys said.

It was a challenge.

Lance held his breath, wondering if anyone else would dare speak against her. No one did. Nixys nodded, looking from Kullak to Jinn, then to the others.

“Millie.”

Millie’s head snapped up as she looked away from the fire.

“You will be in charge of guarding the medical tent until tomorrow. Take the Paladin with you.”

Lance rose to his feet with every intention of arguing. She wanted him to go back to the tent _again?_ Hadn’t he already done enough for one day? “Um, what?” he said. Nixys ignored it.

“Bring food with you.” A weighty, tarnished silver cylinder was tossed at Lance, who caught it easily. He looked at the cylinder. A thermos, he realized.

“But… but…” Lance began to protest, but Nixys lifted a hand for him to silence. A few seconds later, Millie was on her feet in a heartbeat, and the look she shot Lance told him that they were ready to get a move on. But did wait a tick, in case Nixys had anything more to say.

“He’s probably just as hungry as you are. Go.” That was that, he guessed. Lance wanted to contradict her, saying that Keith probably had decent rations in his Galra jet and likely hadn’t been subsisting on vile prison food for the past week, but he bit his tongue. “And after that,” Nixys added just before Lance could turn to leave with Millie, “you can come back here and help clean up.”

 

Without making a fuss, Millie took the thermos gently from Lance’s hands and struck up a walk in the direction of camp. Lance had no choice but to follow - not unless he wanted Kullak or Nixys on his ass. He didn't look back as he followed the tall, willowy woman away from the fire.

Normally, Lance wouldn’t whine.

But he was so _tired,_ and he missed his team. He’d been through some shit. Didn’t he deserve a little peace in the privacy of his own cruiser? “You’ve gotta be k-- really?” he complained, but it was mostly to himself. He got a raised eyebrow in response.

“I just wanna shower,” Lance groaned, but he knew it was a lost cause.

“No refugee stays here without doing a little something to earn their keep," Millie said. A refugee. That was all Lance was now, just a runaway. Another tiny speck trying to run from the Galra.

Not gonna lie, Lance wasn’t the type to run. _Not until now, I guess._

Lance bit his tongue - again. He was bitter enough to hope that the thermos failed and the stew got cold before he made it to the medical tent.

“Nixys is in charge. We do as she says.” Millie kept her voice light. It was funny, she didn't really look that much older than Lance, but something told him she had quite a few years on him. 

“Yeah, well,” Lance muttered, kicking up some of the planet’s weird, bluish dirt. He couldn’t see much besides the light coming from the tents in the distance. “I trust her a lot more than anyone else in that crowd.”

When he looked at Millie, her frown had deepened, turning into a pout. She looked a touch offended. “That _crowd,”_ she said, “is my team. I would trust them all with my life.”

The word “team” touched something in Lance. He could relate a little more to being part of a _team_ than to being part of a ragtag group of renegade lizard people fighting an impossible fight.

Well, maybe he could relate to the “ragtag group fighting an impossible fight” part. This whole war - the resistance against the Galra? - the battle was damn close to impossible.

“Even Tee?” Lance asked, still wondering how Millie could really trust any of that crew with her own life. Maybe it had something to do with how they were all trapped together. Refugees with a common goal.

“Especially Tee,” Millie said quietly. When Lance gave her a funny look, she shook her head, the pout softened into a small smile and she shrugged. “He’s my brother.”

His breath hitched. He hadn’t thought that maybe… “I didn’t realize anyone here actually had family,” he admitted.

Millie shook her head. “It’s fine. Honestly? I’m very lucky. Tee’s the last of my real family. The others have become a new family to me, though.”

Lance didn’t ask what had happened to the rest of her real family. He could put enough of the pieces together to take a wild guess.

Apparently, Millie caught the look on his face. Her smile faded. “It’s not me you should pity,” she said. Her stride towards the camp slowed, and her voice grew even more quiet. “Nixys lost _every_ thing to the Galra. Her mothers, her only brother, and just last year her daughter was taken from her.”

“Nixys had a kid?” Lance asked, stunned.

Nodding, Millie fiddled with the thermos in her hand and dropped her gaze to the ground. “Hess,” she said. “Her daughter was ten years old when she was taken by a Galra soldier. Hess had begged her mother to take her on a scouting mission to an asteroid belt, not too far from Tajny.” Lance kept pace while they continued towards the growing sight of the medical tent, standing tall above the rest.

“...And?”

“Hess wandered off after they landed on one of the asteroids. Apparently, a Galra soldier was doing some scouting of his own when he own found Hess…”

Lance swallowed. He didn’t know if he wanted to hear the rest anymore.

“She was taken.”

Lance’s eyes widened. “Wait,” he said before Millie could continue, “you mean she’s still alive?”

He could read the confusion on Millie’s face, but she answered, “We… we assume so. At least, I think she wants to believe it,” she explained. “The way she tells it, she saw the aircraft taking off, although it didn’t seem to have spotted her. Nixys did an entire search of the asteroid. Twice. No sign of Hess.” She shook her head. “And the markings on the craft were irrefutably Galra.”

“Nixys’s kid could still be alive,” Lance murmured.

But whatever thoughts he was having about a rescue , Millie shot them down immediately. “Hess has been missing for over a year,” she said. She sounded sad... Like there wasn’t any hope left for the kid. To Lance, it sounded heartbreakingly like she already assumed that Nixys’s daughter was dead.

“But-”

“If she _was_ taken by that Galra scout,” Millie interrupted, “it’s unlikely she’s survived this long. The Galra only take prisoners when they want entertainment, or information. Hess knows nothing about the Red Alliance, other than the fact that her mother take care of refugees.”

Lance thought about that carefully. So if Hess knew about what the people of Tajny were doing, or just flat-out knew _where_ Tajny was, then the Galra would have extrapolated that info from her as soon as they had her.

And since the people of Tajny had had _no_ Galra attacks to speak of, it was safe to assume that Hess hadn’t said a word. Meaning…

“If they couldn’t get information out of that ten-year-old child, then she would have been sent to the arenas.” Millie gave Lance a sad look.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

_No, no, I can’t fight them._

Shiro’s opponent could have been tall or short, surly and mean, bloodthirsty and terrifying and trained to kill. They could have been quicker than light or stronger than a fleet of Galra ships. They could have been Zarkon himself. Shiro still would have taken them over the opponent he _did_ have.

The challenger who faced him was none of the above. Well okay, they were short.

They were _short_ , because they couldn’t have been more than a kid.

It _was_ a kid.

He remembered Matthew Holt, and how the guy was so young and not strong enough to fight, no matter that he’d graduated from a military-associated academy. Shiro had grabbed a sentry’s blade and taken a swing at Matt’s leg.

Maybe Matt would have a scar, but at least it was one less victim for the horrors that awaited Shiro in the arena.

Shiro barely heard the announcer call a start to the fight. He just saw the person in front of him, and everything inside of him turned to liquid.

The little kid was shaking from head to toe. She had clawed hands and feet, but that didn’t seem to make her any more dangerous at all. She looked uncomfortable in her own skin, petrified and alone in the middle of the arena. Her uniform was torn in a few places, and dirtier than Shiro’s, even. Her dark face had little cuts and a few bruises around her temple and jaw, where something that looked like scales ran down towards either side of her chin, although it was hard to tell beneath the bright lights shining down into the ring.

The girl looked at Shiro like he was the thing that hid under children’s beds and waited to eat them.

Nauseated and numb, Shiro dropped the blunt sword they’d given him.

_They expected him to murder a child?_

Of course they did. That was what the Galra _did._ They lived for a sick joke. Death in the worst way possible. Double crossings and mind games and psychological warfare.

But they were not going to make Shiro cut down a little kid. Maybe he saw himself as a monster now, but he hadn’t sunk that low. Not yet. Not ever.

Wondering if he should try to get closer, Shiro knelt down on one knee, hands raised in surrender.

The arena full of spectators howled and shrieked their disapproval, but Shiro paid no attention. Over the roar of the crowd, he gave the kid a look that he hoped she would be able to read.

_I’m not going to hurt you. Please let me help you. I’m the good guy._

Not that he knew _what_ he’d do if she agreed to his help, but he’d think of something. Injure her, maybe? Like he’d done to Matt? It was a pretty awful idea, but then, maybe they would replace her with someone else for Shiro to fight.

Something told him they wouldn’t allow that to happen.

So this was why they were so confident that he would win this one. Who loses to a child?

 _Takashi fucking Shirogane does,_ Shiro thought viciously.

Then something miraculous happened. The kid’s expression turned into something a little less scared, and a little more bewildered. Shiro couldn’t blame her - rumors in the cell block spread like wildfire.

Shiro wasn’t _Shiro_ here. He wasn’t the Black Paladin, either. He was the Champion, and anyone who faced the Champion was never heard from again. It looked like this kid knew what was up, but she still took a few steps forward.

Shiro watched. The crowd’s shrieks turned to cheers, watching as the child approached her own doom with a curious look on her face.

When she was close enough, about three or four meters away, Shiro called out over the noise of their audience. “I’m Shiro. What’s..." the roar of the crowd was becoming also deafening. "What's your name?”

He waited.

At first, it looked like the girl wouldn’t talk. Or maybe she hadn't even heard him. But finally her shivering subsided, and she answered him over the din of shouting voices, “I'm Hess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omygooood I'm sorry it's been so long. Really long. I think we can all agree that 2016 was pretty crappy. So here's to a good New Year! And don't be afraid to shoot me a message if you have any questions!


	13. The Fast Track

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *sigh*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been five months but I can explain...?????

Keith was asleep. He hadn’t moved an inch since Lance saw him last, when he’d come to talk about… things.

It was still a little awkward. A lot awkward. Whatever sort of awkward took place when two people from very different worlds were forced to work together.

You know, _that_ kind of awkward?

The circumstances called for some weird shit and Lance was just happy he could say he’d survived the worst of it. So far.

He set the thermos down silently and checked to make sure no one else was around. Keith might be wounded, asleep, and harmless for the moment, but as far as those scouts back at the campfire were concerned, he was still the enemy.

Lance hated to admit it, but he’d rather not let those guys get their hands (claws?) on Keith. Keeping the Galra prince around would be useful, he thought.

Yeah. Useful.

He ignored the weird swell in his heart when he noticed how much Keith’s color had improved within the last couple hours. How vulnerable and soft he looked without his brow in a constant furrow, his expression lax with sleep, chest rising and falling gently beneath the thin covers. The cute nose, nice jawline and - whoa, what?

Um, _no._

Damn it, he could _totally_ hear Pidge’s voice in the back of his head, yelling at him: _Stop thinking with your dick and start thinking with your head, Pala-dumbass._

(And Christ, that reminded him how much he missed Pidge. And the rest of them.)

Lance told himself that now really was not the time to think about Keith’s stupid face and hair and nose and how they were all just stupidly… _appealing,_ for lack of a better word. And Lance wasn’t stupid.

He had a team to get back to, he didn’t have time for these bullshit feelings, feelings that he was absolutely _not_ having for this purple, egotistical twat who actually wasn’t that bad when he just _talked_ to Lance instead of acting like a dick.

Which, he totally still was.

Right. Lance a job to do, one that involved getting him off of this planet, nothing else. So what was stopping him?

He left the tent without a word, storming past Millie before she could stop him. What was more, she didn’t try to follow him, either. Lance had to admit, he liked the Tajnyans’ on-point sense of privacy.

He had no idea where to start.

His cruiser didn’t have a friggin light-speed setting like Keith’s jet apparently had. He didn’t have a working map of this part of the solar system, and even if he tried to rig something up, he doubted he’d get a good reading out here. The locals probably had this area cloaked out the wazoo.

And then there were the refugees. And his busted cruiser. And Keith - no, wait, not Keith. _Shut up, Lance_.

The cruiser, definitely the cruiser. And maybe the Tajnyans, but nothing else. Absolutely nothing else was keeping him here.

Once the cruiser was fixed and he got some directions back to a more familiar sector of this galaxy, he could leave whenever he damn well wanted to.

If Lance was good at anything (other than being a crack shot with a sniper rifle) he was fan-fucking-tastic at suppressing feelings he didn’t have the time of day for. _Just shove that shit away for another day. Yup._

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

The days on Tajny were long, just like Keith had promised. Not that he was thinking about Keith.

Lance spent his first official day on the planet sleeping in, in the relative comfort of his cruiser. Sure, just throw down some spare blankets from the storage compartment, that one thin pillow he kept in case of emergencies like these, a folded up jacket, and presto, a super-comfy bed fit for a king. Or at the very least, a Lance. Now wasn’t the time to be picky.

He was rudely awakened by a loud banging on the main door of the cruiser.

Nixys. Figures.

Lizard lady waited out in the dark, wearing night goggles and her usual grey attire. Lance didn’t need to see her eyes to know that they were narrowed with disapproval.

“Feeling lazy today, are we?”

“What? Pshh..” Lance huffed a laugh that couldn’t pass for casual even if it was Friday night at a McDonald’s.

“If you’re going to be staying here, outside of our camp, you’re going to work,” Nixys said without any precursor. “Now get dressed, or I’ll put you on cleanup duty in the medical tents. Paladin.”

Lance could only assume that that was one of the worse jobs to be working, so he heeded her word and changed into his suit and tee shirt as soon as she left, safely shutting the door behind her.

For good measure, he switched on the tinted windows.

They worked like a charm in the same way that one-way mirrors worked; he could see out, but no one could see in. Lance may have very little shame, but even he had his boundaries. Couldn’t just let _anyone_ get a peek at these guns.

Literally every member of his team would have rolled their eyes if he ever fucking said that out loud. Which he had. So he knew that if they’d done it before, they’d do it again.

 

Work for the day mostly involved keeping lookout with the scoping goggles he’d been given - outdated, just like the suits - and passing supplies back and forth between the two main camps within about a half mile of each other.

Morning on this planet was dark, up until a few more hours after Lance had already woken up. Only then did the planet’s orange sun pop into sight, giving some real light to see by.

Someone handed him a long piece of greyish cloth at some point. A shemagh of sorts, which he wrapped around his head so that everything was covered but his eyes. Already, Tajny’s sun was giving off a heat not so unlike the summer heat waves in Ventura. The dust around these parts wasn’t the greatest thing, either.

Everyone shed the goggles around ten a.m. standard earth time; Lance refused to go by any other time, keeping the digital watch on his wrist at all hours.

Would it throw off his sleeping schedule, like, permanently? Yes, yes it would.

But he was stubborn when it came to Earth stuff.

And all the while, he tried not to think about how Keith was doing back in the medical tent with just Nixys for company and some random healer who may or may not hold a deep, irrevocable grudge against Keith and his kind.

Most of the locals Lance met throughout the long, grueling day gave him shifty looks, but word must have spread about the Blue Paladin landing on Tajny, because no one asked questions.

Lance spotted refugees who definitely _weren’t_ from Tajny within his first hour on duty just outside the main camp, while helping carry some equipment that had just come from the neighbor camp.

 

Someone finally approached him by mid-afternoon: a girl, shorter than Lance (though not by much) wearing her own shemagh, and a long tunic over her CosMesh, belted at the waist with something that looked like weathered rope.

“Blue Paladin, right?” she asked, holding out a four-fingered hand for him to shake.

He shook it, just happy someone was talking to him instead of  glaring at him.

“Lance,” he said with a grin, turning on the charm even though he felt like shit after six hours in the desert heat. “Lance is fine.”

“Marline,” the girl said as their hands dropped back to their sides. In the shade of the tent they stood next to, she reached up to unwrap her shemagh, revealing darker grey skin underneath and a small mouth curled upward in an amicable smile. Her nose was almost nonexistent but her eyes were very large, with irises that were unnaturally purple. Her head was shaved, and she looked intelligent in a way that spoke of a far, far greater awareness than most. An awareness of what?

 _Of everything_ , Lance assumed. She seemed endearingly sweet and soft with her big eyes and short stature, but also not someone people should mess with. Lance caught sight of a row of knives in holsters lining the rope belt, and determined such a thing too risky.

“How come you’re still here?” she asked, leaning against one of the sturdy tent posts. “On Tajny? Why haven’t you left if you’re not injured anymore, is your ship broken or something?”

“Or something,” Lance muttered, sighing. His eyes flicked in the direction of Marline’s enormous eyes, then away. Trying to be cool, he also leaned against one of the tent posts.

It was with a split-second moment of regret that he realized it wasn’t quite as sturdy as the other one. The post toppled over, along with Lance, whose rear end collided with indigo desert dirt. Hard.

It was only by some force of pure luck that the tent remained standing.

Marline laughed, which may have made Lance turn a little redder than the sun had already done. She reached out to help him up.

“What does ‘or something’ mean?” She asked conversationally. Lance stood and brushed himself off. He tried to play the embarrassment off like it was nothing, but he also didn’t try to lean against anything else.

With a shrug, he answered, “I’m trying to work out a few bugs on my cruiser. A couple things got busted up during a little fight a couple days ago with the Galra and... my tracking system is kinda shot to hell.”

Marline cocked her head. “A fight with the Galra?” she asked. “You mean when you escaped with the prince.”

Lance nodded. “Yup, that one. Fun times.”

“Doesn’t sound very fun.” Sighing, she hugged herself and sagged a little against the post while her tunic fluttered in the Tajnyan breeze. A very dusty breeze. Lance coughed.

“Nah. But we made it out.”

She hummed. “We all do what we have to, I guess.” Her expression was a shade sadder than Lance could find a reason for.

“What about you?” he asked, without thinking. He felt bad the second the words came out.

Sad purple eyes looked away from him, cast down at the ground. “I have nowhere else to go,” she said quietly. A grey finger thumbed one of the holsters at her belt.  “My home was razed in a Galra attack about six years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.” Why did Lance always say stuff that made him look like a total douche? He felt awful. “Holy crap seriously I am so sorry, I really didn’t mean-”

“No no, it’s fine,” she waved it off. “We all slip up. It happens.”

Lance thought she was being a little too nice, but he didn’t push. His own eyes fell to the ground.

“So…” Marline murmured, still looking down, “you came here with the prince.”

“Y-yep,” answered Lance, popping the P.

“So what’s he like?”

He snapped his head back to look at her. “Who, Keith?”

Marline’s eyes flew wider, if that was even possible. Damn, they were _huge_. “Is that his name?” she asked. “Keith?”

Lance wondered if she could tell he was blushing.

“You’re blushing.”

Okay, so that was a yes.

“Um, I have to go…” he pointed weakly off towards the distance in the direction of his cruiser.

“Wait, what?” Marline looked taken aback. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Where do you have to be?”

Lance huffed out a nervous laugh. “Oh y’know, gotta go fix the cruiser.”

“Our shift isn’t up until the sun starts to set." There was something in her eyes. She suddenly looked like trouble, this refugee girl. Lance didn't like it one bit. Trouble, as in, _I'm gonna get you to spill all your little secrets, honey._  "Tell me about the prince. _Keith._ What’s up with you and him?" she asked, a glint of something in her eyes. "You’re on a first-name basis, don’t tell me you’re actually friends with him?”

“Oh, we are _so_ not friends,” Lance said immediately.

Marline gave him a pointed look. It was that _look,_  the one that girls give you when they just aren't buying it - and it's normally with good reason.

“We’re acquaintances,” Lance said, jaw set. He wasn’t gonna let her get to him.

“Really. So you call all strangers by their first name? Even royalty?”

“He’s a Galra. Their royalty doesn’t deserve our respect.”

Marline gave a shrug. The wind picked up, and she hugged herself tighter. “While I agree with you there…” she shook her head. “But y'know, I guess it’s not really my business, is it?”

They held gazes for a few seconds, coming to a mutual agreement in that moment.

Lance had to admit, he liked Marline okay. He’d only known her for a few minutes but, hey, had to start somewhere right?

“I have to go,” she said, glancing up at the sky where the sun had begun to dip a little lower. “I should get back to the other camp. They need more muscle there to carry supplies. I’ll see you around, Lance?”

With a nod, Lance smiled back at her. “Do I have a choice?”

A laugh, and then Marline was jogging away towards a gaggle of workers all grouped together to head out towards the neighboring camp. Lance was left alone by the tent.

 

He didn’t see Keith that day.

 

Around ten p.m. SET Lance trudged the half mile back to his cruiser with sore feet and a hollowness in his chest.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

For some reason, Nixys let him off the hook the next day.

He got an extra hour of sleep _and_ some time to get to work on the damage that had been dealt to his baby Blue in the firefight. The one he’d been luckier to survive than he cared to admit.

He hung out by himself all day, holed up in the cruiser with a box of tools and a newfound drive to get the _hell_ off of this weird ass planet with purple sand and lizard people. Lance had seen some weird shit in his day, but he wasn’t a fan of the food here. Not at all.

He would take food goo at this point.

*****

**()0()**

*****

On the third day, Lance really had no choice but to go and talk to Keith. In the end, it was Keith who found him.

What, had this been Nixys’s plan all along? Let them both stew on their own until they went completely bonkers? Surely she must’ve caught on that the both of them were the most stubborn pair in the entire goddamn universe - No lie.

Nixys told him that day that Keith, rested and fed and a little ticked that he hadn’t recovered faster, was finally back on his feet.

He would need to meet the rest of the Tajnyans on duty, and if they didn’t like him…

Well, it was safe to say they wouldn’t be keeping him or Lance around for much longer if that was the case.

He caught a quick glimpse of Keith when he passed the medical tent, just as Nixys was leaving. She glared. “Done work so soon?”

“The sun is setting! That’s when the shift ends, come on.”

He knew Nixys couldn’t argue, considering he was right.

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Keith found him in the cruiser just as it was getting dark.

He’d changed into a very updated suit of CosMesh, which meant he’d probably taken a visit to his own jet before coming here.

“Hey,” he said, standing in the open doorway of the cockpit.

Lance looked up from fiddling with something at the dashboard.

“Oh,” he said. “Uh, hey. They finally let you out of the sick tent?” He tried to get a read on the other guy’s face. Nothing. Not unless you counted exhaustion. The bags weren't as prominent, at least. He looked thin, but at least he was standing up and had his coloring back.

“Yeah, finally,” said Keith with a pat to his side. Although Lance couldn’t see the wound beneath the suit, he could assume the worst of it was healed.

“That’s… good,” he answered, trying not to be awkward. Trying not to stare. Really, he was just trying to fix his cruiser, and that was all. But it was a little hard to concentrate with Keith standing right there with absolutely zero armour on, just the tight CosMesh and a long-sleeved shirt, and some soft-looking boots that looked acceptable for desert travel. Probably borrowed.

He looked good.

Keith looked _scores_ better than he had the other day. If Lance wasn’t so firmly set on making himself believe that the Galra had no exceptions to their violent history, he’d say Keith looked like someone he’d really like to have around to watch his back.

“I just wanted to double check on something…” Keith sounded wary. His eyes flicked to the dashboard and back again. “Your cruiser was free of tracking tech, right? Sometimes it’s a little easy to miss if you don’t know what you’re looking for and...” he paused, like he was thinking of something but the words had escaped him.

Lance rolled his eyes. _Really? This is all he came to ask about?_ “Already checked and double-checked. Ran a million diagnostic tests and everything.”

“Why doesn’t that make me feel better?”

“Don’t hate, I know what I’m doing.” He paused, then admitted, "Although, some of my equipment's been a little bit screwed up, so fingers crossed nothing went wrong, I guess?"

"I'm gonna pretend you're joking."

Jeez, insulting his abilities much? Lance withheld some choice words and ran a hand through his hair, still damp from his shower. The dust really found its way into all the little nooks and crannies when you were working a full day shift in a desert. The shower water had started out clear, and washed away a tinted indigo.

“No hate, I’m just still surprised you know your way around this piece of junk,” Keith said, referring to the blue cruiser. A faux pas he continued to make even now. And it was one hundred percent on-purpose, Lance was positive.

Lance could tolerate many things, but insulting the cruiser - again - was crossing the line. It was crossing the fucking line, man.

“Ex-kuh- _use_ me,” He pointed a finger up, so close to Keith’s face that he almost took out the guy’s nose. “Dude. You insult my baby one more time and I’m going to run you the _frick_ over with it.”

 _“Baby?”_ Keith asked with a short laugh. “It’s a cruiser, not a child.”

“It is _my_ child, and you will not disrespect it like this,” Lance snapped, standing up from his place by the opened toolbox, where the contents had since been scattered all around his feet. “ _Capische_ , brosef?”

“For the last time, please stop talking to me like that.”

“Like what?” asked Lance, pulling his eyes away from the toolbox scattered out in front of him as he stepped over a screwdriver. “Like a normal person? Not all of us grew up in the army, you know.”

That seemed to hit Keith a little harder than Lance had meant for it to. The guy’s ears actually drooped _._ Lance hadn’t realized that that was like, a _thing._

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Lance said quickly.

“It’s whatever. You’re not wrong, I guess. Forget it.” He turned to leave.

“No,” Lance refused to let it go. Even _he_ was adult enough to admit when he’d really screwed up. Like now. Damn, he needed to figure out how to talk to people without sounding like a horrible person. “It’s not ‘whatever.’ That wasn’t cool and -and I’m sorry.”

“Seriously, don’t be.”

“ _Seriously_ , I’m just trying to apologize, okay?” Lance insisted.

One hand on the side of the doorway, Keith turned his head to look over his shoulder. His expression was neutral, but Lance could tell he didn’t feel that way. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No. I should be apologizing.”

Keith looked a little bit baffled by now as he turned fully around. He blinked, saying, “It was just one little thing, it’s not a big deal.”

But Lance shook his head. “I’m not just talking about _that,”_ he said, in reference to his slip of the tongue, “I’m talking about… this.” He made a vague gesture between himself and Keith, like that explained everything.

Which it didn’t, which led Keith to articulately express his warranted confusion with a, “Huh?”

“Jesus,” Lance muttered. “You're lucky I didn’t just finish the job back on that ship because I would _so_ do it now."

"Excuse me?"

"Yeah. Just so I wouldn’t have to look at your _stupid_ face again and-” he was snapping. He was seriously snapping now. What was more, he wasn’t really sure why. The stress? The week in Galra prison? Sure, either of those made for a good excuse. And venting felt nice. Really nice. “- _So_ lucky I don’t have my Bayard on me-”

“Oh!” Keith interrupted Lance’s stream of thought, snapping his fingers. “Right, I almost forgot. Give me a tick.” With that, he turned around and hopped out of the cockpit.

What was _that_  all about?

Lance frowned. Okay... so was that it, then?

 _Good riddance,_ he thought. Maybe he'd spooked off Kogane for the night. If he had, hey, fine by him.

He shrugged to himself and knelt back down, chalking it up to sleep deprivation on Keith’s end, and something Lance had said on his end. Fine. It was easier to ignore everything else, anyway.

He searched through his pile of tools, wondering if he could make sense of all the random wrenches tossed into his collection. Hunk was so much better at this stuff that he was, God, all he wanted was for Hunk to hug him and say, “You got this, bro!” while choking the life out of him. Hunk’s bear hugs tended to do that. Thinking about his best friend made Lance’s stomach tie itself up in homesick knots.

Five minutes later, Keith returned.

In his arms was something that made Lance _almost_ as happy as seeing his best friend.

Keith was cradling a hefty, intergalactic sniper rifle, clean and shiny like new.

“My Bayard!” Lance cried, ecstatic to see his beloved firearm. 

He didn’t wait a second more when Keith held the precious weapon out to him, relieved to be reunited with his rifle. He shot to his feet and grabbed the Bayard, holding it close like it was his own little Prodigal son. 

“Oh baby, I missed you _so much,”_ he crooned, running a hand over the sleek grey and blue. Keith’s nose scrunched as he watched the unorthodox reunion between man and firearm.

"Uh... you're welcome," Keith said.

When Lance stopped making kissy noises to his Bayard, he turned around, a look of _I may not actually hate you right now_ plastered on his face. He knew he probably looked ridiculous - and a little high - but oh man, this was really what the doctor ordered after a _long_ few days of bullshit. “How did you even get this?” he asked, stroking the gun like a pet cockatoo.

“Easy. I asked for it.”

“Uh…. Before you helped me escape, you mean.”

“Duh.”

Lance never thought he’d ever have the privilege of hearing a Galra officer say “ _duh.”_ He wished he could share it with the rest of his team, but.

Right. The reason he needed to get out of here.

But the refugees. The Alliance. They seemed like they needed all the help they could get, and if Lance left now, then what did that make him?

 _A total, complete and utter shithead,_ the little voice in Lance’s brain said. With a sigh, he set his Bayard down gently in the pilot's seat and sat back down, searching for something scattered in with the mess of tools.

“I’ve always felt different," Keith started slowly, watching Lance from his own spot in the door of the cockpit. "You know… I’m not entirely Galra. Some think it’s noticeable, others just think I’m odd. I don’t know what to think,” Keith shrugged.

Lance knew what he meant.

Even without the soldier’s uniform, he still had the ears, the purple skin, the eyes, even the teeth - things thatl marked him as Galra. But his features looked like they had been sculpted by someone who had been given a description of the Galra, then gone and added their own style, softening out the concept of a Galra soldier and adding something distinctly human.

And maybe that was why Lance had an easier time distinguishing the differences—because as a human, he could see that he and Keith had more in common than he’d originally thought.

“Keith… have you ever thought that, maybe…?” he didn’t finish the sentence.

“Maybe I’m not the only one out there?” Keith suggested. “Maybe other Galra also want peace?”

Lance shrugged.

“Doubtful.”

“I mean, you never know.”

“I’m not taking that chance," Keith snapped. Lance held up his hands, defensive. "I’m going to do what I know, and that’s helping people in the only way I know how. I protect them. I get as many to safety as I can.”

“You can’t just keep playing Robin Hood to the rescue for the rest of your life,” Lance murmured.

“Which is why, when I heard of Voltron and the return of the Alteans, I knew there might still be a chance.”

Lance’s mouth fell open.

“ _That’s_ why you let me live,” he said. “The real reason.”

This time it was Keith who shrugged. “You guys were my only hope, by that point. And even if you _had_ gone through with killing me, at least I wouldn’t have to deal with this whole mess anymore.”

"Hey, wait..." Lance wanted to protest. He really hated when people started getting like that. All angsty and stuff. It was too depressing.

Keith wouldn't stop, now. “I’ve spent six years under the Galra’s nose, fighting since I was thirteen, always questioning when my cold-shoulder commander of a father always told me, “It’s us or them.”

Lance’s blood ran cold. Just another testimony to the way that the Galra’s minds worked, how they behaved, how they believed everything was a fight, everything was a war to be won.

“I lived on my own for a little,” Keith continued, “When I was thirteen, two years after my dad was killed in battle, I lived on one of Tajny’s moons.  And when I came to the planet, I realized that people actually lived here, and I knew I could bring others here, to hide if nothing else. I joined the Galra military.” His face was expressionless. Cold. Lance couldn’t blame him - he’d probably feel the same way if he had a childhood like that.  

“They looked at my files and saw I was of royal blood, and after that it was easier to gain their trust. I played the role of a dogfighter and an unstoppable, underhanded son of a bitch.” He finally cracked a grin, before adding, “Naturally, they loved me.”

Lance grinned, too.

“The Galra looked the other way when I broke one rule too many. Some even endorsed the fights I worked so hard to look like I was supporting. They didn’t realize what I was doing. They didn’t notice how few weakling fighters made it into the arena. How few children.”

“…Because you got them out,” Lance realized.

“Fed them the sedatives.” His voice caught, like he was trying to swallow something. “No one… n-no one questioned me when I offered to escort the sick ones to another planet or asteroid belt or whatever to… to rot.”

Lance winced. “You did what you could.”

“Don't we all?" Keith huffed, bitter. "No one had any idea what was really going on until we arrived at Tajny and I told them they were free, that they would be looked after.” Keith’s expression twisted in misery. “I can’t go back to that ship now, not yet. I can’t help them like I could before. I’ve got to find another way back.”

“We will,” said Lance.

Keith caught how Lance had said “we,” and not, “you.” It read in his face. He didn’t point it out.

Lance could hear everything else Keith had implied. Keith never belonged. Not anywhere. An orphan since age thirteen, and not exactly raised on kid’s fairytales and kumbayas, but he must have had at least a _taste_ of compassion in his life—otherwise, how could he have turned out the way he had?

Lance looked at the Galra soldier, royal in blood and lethal on the battlefield, and he saw someone who would lay down their life for a total stranger if it meant protecting an innocent from the iron fist of the Galra Empire.

And Lance saw the brokenness. The stoic exterior that only did so much to mask the messy, stubborn mess of _lonely._ Something stirred in Lance’s chest, and it warmed with the thought that this man had done so much more than most people his age could (or would). And Keith had done it alone, for the most part.

“I have a scar on my shoulder,” Lance said, without any sort of segue. He just said it. “The left one. It’s been hurting ever since they captured me on the ship, and I think it’s the universe trying to punish me for what I did three years ago.” He swallowed. “When I was still new to… all of this.”

Keith paused. Now he looked curious. A little confused. His expression told Lance that he didn't understand why he was suddenly telling him this information.

“It was the first time I realized I wasn’t the perfect sniper I thought I was," Lance admitted. The wrench he'd been using hung loosely in his hand. "And I learned from it. Only, now it looks like it wants me to remember it all over again.”

“What happened?” Keith asked. His voice sounded careful - like Lance might bolt if he spoke to loud, too suddenly.

Lance sighed, shutting his eyes. He didn’t want to remember it.

“Shot the wrong target,” he murmured. “They’d set up an ambush. I accidentally killed a prisoner who’d been tricked into thinking they were being set free.”

“Lance…”

Lance took in a deep breath involuntarily, but caught himself before the hyperventilating could start. “Killed immediately. I saw them drop. That was when I felt it.”

It was Keith’s turn to wince, pained on Lance’s behalf. How nice of him.

“Assassin with a knife. I was fast but… not fast enough.” He bit his lip, nodding bitterly.

Taking a risk, Keith asked, “Could I… can I see where?” He took a step closer, hesitant. When Lance didn't make a face or back away, he took another step.

Lance raised an eyebrow. “The scar?” he asked.

Keith nodded.

“I-I..” Lance hesitated. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know about that.”

“You said it was hurting.”

“Not _that_ bad.” But even as he said it, the scar twinged. Keith didn’t miss the little twitch in his jaw. “I’m- It’s fine. Just stings a little more than usual. I can deal.”

“Lance.”

“Keith.”

“Take off your shirt.”

Lance’s eyebrows flew high up. “Damn, dude, take me to dinner first.”

“Don’t be an asshole. I just wanna take a look at the scar.”

Begrudgingly, Lance reached up, grabbing the collar of his tee shirt and tugging. The shirt came off, leaving nothing but his black CosMesh, thin and fitted to him like a second skin. It covered him from his neck, to his wrists, down to where his torso ended and his hips took over. Slowly, carefully, he peeled away the stretchy material, then tossed it aside with his toolbox.

He didn’t want to look.

He didn’t need to see the thin line of faded white and splotchy pink going from the top of his shoulder down to the bottom of his shoulder blade. The cut had nearly taken his arm off. If not for the healing pod back at HQ, he would’ve lost the arm completely. Or died - There had been so much blood. He was lucky. _Way_ too lucky.  

“Move,” Keith said, gesturing for Lance to scoot closer as he knelt down next to him, where he could see better. He reached out a hand to brush lightly over the white scar, and Lance instinctively jerked his shoulder away.

“S-Sorry. That hurt?” Keith asked, keeping his hand where it was, hanging in midair.

“No, no,” Lance sighed. “It’s fine. Just don’t make it worse, princess.”

Keith ignored the jab. His hand reached to fall over the scar again, and this time, Lance didn’t protest. Was it warm in here?

They were in a desert. So, yeah.

Careful fingers smoothed over the discolored skin, gentle and searching. “This must’ve been pretty deep,” he murmured, so quiet Lance wondered if maybe Keith was talking to himself. The fingers continued to brush over the scar. Despite the heat, Lance could feel himself getting goosebumps. _Not now, Lance,_ Lance told himself. He was an adult. Could he calm the hell down for like, two minutes?

The fingers stopped. “What the…”

Lance’s head snapped around. “What?” he asked, suddenly nervous. “What is it?”

Keith tapped a finger over a spot on Lance’s shoulder blade. “This,” he said.

“A little more specific?”

Keith sounded nervous, now. And intense. Angry, maybe? “There’s a tiny bump, right here.” The finger tapped again.

“O-oh, yeah, sorry,” Lance huffed awkwardly. “Those are just goosebumps.”

“No, I mean a  _bump_ \- it’s coming from just beneath the skin. Like something's been inserted there. Wait, did you not notice this before?”

Lance could feel the back of his neck prickle with unease.

“...What?”

"That's… that’s not scar tissue."

Lance leaned away from the hand at his shoulder, brow furrowed. He wanted to know what Keith was talking about. Like, _now._

“Dude,” he said anxiously, “Would you please tell me what’s up before I die of anxiety here? Stop kidding around.”

“I'm not kidding around,” Keith muttered. When Lance turned around to look at him, it was to the face of someone with murder on the brain. The look on Keith’s face was somewhere between vengeful and betrayed. “There’s an implant in your shoulder,” he hissed. “They’ve been tracking you - _us -_ this whole time.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> XD y'all don't worry he's just angry at the Galra, not at Lance. Lance is safe from the wrath of princess keef.


	14. Desperado

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It may be raining, but there's a rainbow above you....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have an update, folks!

There was a silence in the cruiser so tense, it was amazing someone didn’t spontaneously combust.

“I’m going to have to cut it out.”

“Cut like… like _cut?”_ Lance asked uneasily.

Keith dug around in the enormous first aid kit until he drew out the object he was looking for. “You said you trust me, right?”

Lance swallowed, and looked at the thing in Keith’s hand, pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

“Guess I have no choice, do I?”

In Keith’s hand was a tiny blade, smaller than a regular old scalpel - part of the stock kept in the cruiser’s first aid kit. Lance wasn’t sure how he felt about that now. Weren’t there, like, easier Methods? Methods that didn't involve slicing and dicing and stuff?

“I swear to everything I believe in that I’ll get this thing out.”

“Even if it kills me?” Lance asked, only half-joking. When he turned to look at Keith, yellow eyes were narrowed. Dark. Concentrated.

“If it turns nasty I’ll stop,” Keith promised. At least, it sounded like one to Lance.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

“I’m going after them.”

Coran turned just in time to catch Allura entering the main docking station, all suited up. Like she was ready for a flight out. Why…?

“Allura?” Coran asked. He stood at the window, a floor-to-ceiling thing made from two layers of blast-proof CosmiGlass. They were new, just recently replaced this past year after Lance whined about how desperately HQ needed a revamp. They were far from being finished, but the windows were a start. And they made the Headquarters more secure.

“Don’t try to stop me,” Allura said. There was a dangerously determined glint in her eye. And it wasn’t that Coran was an unintelligent man - really, far from it - but what Allura appeared to be doing… well, he _was_ tempted to stop her. He was her guardian. Yeah, he was the Head of Security and Technology and what have you, but first and foremost, he was Allura’s _guardian._

“I assume you mean the prince,” he said evenly. He kept his hands clasped behind his waist, shoulders back, every bit the military man he was ten thousand years ago and then some.

“Lance is with him, Coran,” Allura said, “I know it. If I can get at least one member of Voltron back…” her voice never wavered, not for one second, but it was still an easy voice to place. Coran had heard it too many times before: Agonized, but firmly set in her decision.

And if Allura was in this sort of mindset right now, there was no way anyone would dare get in her way. No way anyone would so much as attempt to talk her out of it. Why should they? Allura possessed a warrior’s stoicism, the brazen attitude of a fighter, and the training to match. Highly qualified? _Please_.

To say she was “highly qualified” was barely skimming the surface. Allura was a supercharged storm with a blaster at her hip; she was made of deadly supernovas - send anyone near her just before the final countdown, and it was guaranteed that no one would make it out alive.

“And once I find them, I’m going to get Shiro,” she said.

Coran looked taken aback. “But we don’t even have a _theory_ on where Shiro is. He may not be on that ship anymore, you know that, don’t you?”

“I’ve been working with Pidge,” Allura answered coolly. “That signal hopper of hers is better than even I expected… she traced his helmet. We know for a fact that he’s not on the warship, but we may have an idea of where he was moved. If Hunk’s hunch is correct, that is.”

“Which is?” Coran looked worried. Thick eyebrows pinched together, where lines stood out on his face even more than they used to. Without the advantage of a seemingly-endless sleep in a cryopod, their bodies had begun to age again. Not as fast as humans, but after a few years there might have been the tiniest change or two to show for it.

Allura shifted on her feet, her own brow scrunched up in thought. “Pidge and Hunk ran some diagnostics, collected together some of the information that Rolo and Nyma dug up on that warship and on its records with prisoner trafficking. It’s likely that Shiro’s fighting for his life right now.” With every word, her voice fell a little quieter.

Coran’s expression gentled. “Princess, tracking the prince _and_ rescuing Shiro could take more time than we have-”

“I’ve already had Pidge pull up some coordinates,” Allura just about snapped. Coran frowned, and Allura’s expression turned a touch more apologetic.

“With a general idea of where that jet is headed, I can trail them,” she explained as she eyed the cruiser docked a few meters away. It was separated from her and Coran by a transparent wall of yet more CosmiGlass, and the door was already open. Ready for her to walk through. “Perhaps I can get a read on the jet if I can catch up to it. And if they’ve found a resting planet to land on, then that’s where I’ll go, too.”

“And if you get caught?”

“I won’t.”

“But _if_ you do-”

“I _won’t,_ Coran.” Her lips tightened in a thin line. She looked harsh and worn out, but ready to do whatever it took, regardless. Her helmet sat cradled in the crook of her arm.

The white suit shone, probably freshly cleaned because Allura never approved of anything less than the best. She hadn’t had to wear the suit ages; It was similar to those of the Paladins, but no designs. Just a pure white suit complete with a camouflage setting and boots hard enough that not even laserfire could do them damage.

“Princess...” Coran sighed. He unclasped his hands and walked forward, gently raising his hands to place them on Allura’s shoulders. She didn’t back away. In fact, she barely moved at all. “Whether or not the prince got Lance off of that ship, he _is_ still Galra. I don’t… I couldn’t let you risk your life like this.”

“You doubt my abilities, Coran?” Her voice was calm. Gentle and not unkind. But there was that light in her eyes, a fire that burned so hot it was blue, and Coran knew before the conversation had even begun that he wasn’t talking Allura out of this.

“Not even for a moment,” he said quietly. He lowered his hands and Allura took a step back, arranging the white helmet more securely in her arm.

“Good. And I’m taking the white cruiser,” she said. With a steadying breath, she looked out the window and over the rolling hills, the stretches of rocks and dirt that comprised most of planet Arus. “What is it they say on Earth?” she wondered aloud as her gaze fell over the darkened landscape. “I think it was something like, ‘Don’t wait up for me.’”

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

“Hang on a sec…"

Lance waited with bated breath, barely keeping himself from throwing up. He didn't know it he wanted to hear what Keith had to say. Was the tracker out? Were they as good as dead?

"it’s-it’s dead. It’s dead! The tracker’s not working!”

Lance pondered that for a moment as the meaning behind the words sank into his stress-addled brain.

The tracker  _wasn't_ working? When something wasn’t working, that normally meant it was bad news.

Right now, it was _great_ news.

Keith’s hands shook as he lifted up the freshly-removed tracker for closer inspection.

“It’s… _how_?” Lance held his breath, daring to hope for the best. He was shaking too.

The little tremors still made the hairs on the back of his neck and all over his arms raise like he’d seen a ghost. Honestly, he felt like one himself. Having a knife, even a little itty bitty one, slicing open the same skin that had been carved into years ago had come very close to sending him back to that moment. To reliving that trauma.

But Keith had been careful, and for what it was worth, very, _very_ gentle. Or as gentle as one can be when cutting open skin to remove a Galra tracking implant. Lance knew he should be grateful for that. 

Patched up now with some gauze and medical tape from the cruiser’s first aid kit, Lance could breathe again.

Keith’s lips puckered thoughtfully as he held the thing closer to his face. “It’s all burned,” he muttered, “The ends of the wires are all black and frayed. It looks like some of it was melted a while ago.” He was silent for a moment, thinking.

Suddenly, his mouth fell open and his head whipped around, bright eyes boring holes into Lance. “Oh my god,” he said, “Haxus _.”_

Lance blinked. What about Haxus?

“What?” he said.

But Keith was grinning, staring from the tracker to Lance, back and forth. “Haxus!” He repeated as he pointed at the little lump of tech. Lance shook his head and gave him a look as if to say, _Dude, are you OK?_

Keith set down the tiny lump of metal and wire, blackened and coated sticky in blood. Cringing, he reached for a rag tossed by Lance’s toolbox and wiped off his hands.

Lance watched as a red stain grew on the rag from his own blood and he wrinkled his nose, but didn’t tell Keith off for it. He kinda just almost saved his life again, after all. At least, he _would_ have if the tracker had still been functioning. Either way, a close call.

But Keith had checked and double checked. The thing was dead. Deader than a doornail.

“...I don’t understand,” Lance said, clearly still waiting on an explanation.

With a nervous laugh, Keith wiped away the barest sheen of sweat that had gathered at his brow and just above his upper lip. He looked just as stressed out as Lance had been during the entire procedure. No pain killers had been taken, either. Why? Oh, because Lance was too stubborn to take any. In front of Keith? He’d rather tough it out.

Which he did. And no, he did not cry at all. Not even a little.

Maybe a little. Keith was either too concentrated on his task to notice, or too polite to point it out.

Lance really did have to hand it to him, Keith was good at this sort of stuff under pressure. Who knew the Galra military also taught hella first aid?

The ultimate worry was that, because of how close the tracker had been to his spine, the wires connected to the tracker could have been inserted into Lance’s spinal cord - And if that had been the case, it would’ve been impossible to remove quickly without killing Lance immediately. Lance would be lying if he said his heart hadn’t jumped into the back of his throat for a second or two. That was before Keith assured him otherwise, of course.

There was no way it could have been connected to such sensitive tissue, the Galra wouldn’t have had enough time to do a proper surgery for that. Just a quick, shallow injection right below the dermis and epidermis. And thank god the wires only pricked a little deeper than that...

No _wonder_ Lance’s shoulder had been giving him trouble lately.

“You remember when Haxus brought you in for questioning?” Keith asked, giving the removed implant another glance.

Lance snorted a humorless laugh. “How could I forget,” he said. Then it dawned on him. “Ohhhhh…” his mouth fell open a little when he came to the same conclusion. Keith rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, _oh.”_

“It’s totally destroyed?” Lance hedged, hesitant as his eyes flicked down to the burnt metal still coated with his blood.

“One hundred percent.” Not even a glimmer of doubt in Keith’s voice. “Damn. And I thought Haxus was an idiot before, but now-- _”_

“Totally a dickhead.”

They nodded in agreement. Lance looked at Keith.

Keith looked at Lance.

The two of them burst out laughing before either of them could process what was happening.

“I-I’ll bet he didn’t even _know_ about it,” Keith wheezed, shoulders shaking. Lance’s own laugh died down when he heard the sound.

Keith. Laughing.

It wasn’t... _terrible_. A really nice sound, actually, a little bit airy and breathless, and holy crap, Lance liked that sound. He _liked_ Keith’s laugh.

And that thought sobered him up mighty quick.

“How - How did they even do it in the first place?” he asked as soon as Keith was done.

"Hmm?"

"How'd they even..." Lance shuddered, "get that thing in me?" He winced, because it sounded even worse when he said it like that.

Keith cleared his throat and sighed, sitting back with his hands steadying himself on the floor behind him. “They must’ve injected it into you when they knocked you out with the tranquilizers,” he murmured, scratching below his chin as he thought.

It really was quiet here in the cruiser.

Back at the camp, everyone was either sleeping, or out on patrol. No one came near the Blue Cruiser or Keith’s jet, thanks to a special request courtesy of Nixys. She really was the best.

"Gross." Lance 's lips puckered in thought. "That's um. Good. Glad that's over then." A little too quickly he snatched up his tee-shirt, tugging it over his head with less grace than he could've done.

Keith averted his eyes, admittedly a little shaken, too. His eyes fell to the tracker again as Lance shuffled away, willing himself to breathe normally. 

 _Just shake it off,_ Lance told himself.

He clapped his hands together, all of a sudden, expression completely changed. “Okay, what this place needs is a little music.” Lance hopped up from his spot on the floor and took long strides over to the cruiser’s main control panel, leaving Keith to stare back at him in confusion.

“Music…?” Keith stood up too, watching Lance with a skeptical look.

“Yeah,” Lance said with a shrug, eyes only for the dashboard. “It’s way too serious around here, and as your resident Blue Paladin I feel morally obligated to lighten this place up _.”_ He bounced on the balls of his feet, humming to himself.

Keith frowned. “We don’t have anything that _plays_ music,” he said, more perplexed than anything.

“Oh, leave that to me.” Lance had a slowly growing grin on his face; it was the grin he wore when he got one of his _good_ _ideas._ Most of his teammates ran the other way when they saw that a ‘Lance idea’ was in sight, but Keith, being Keith, didn’t know any better. “Wait right there, just gotta mess with the cruiser’s panel a little bit. I should be able to figure something out.”

Lance fiddled with the controls, turning a knob here, pressing a button there, before typing a few commands in—something that Pidge had taught him months ago. Lance wasn’t sure if the signal would work from all the way out here, away from Arus and away from Earth’s satellites, but hey, it was worth a shot. These cruiser’s signals were some heavy-duty motherfuckers.

With a final jab at one of the green buttons, Lance typed in a station at the screen and turned the smallest dial all the way around, watching as the numbers on the screen shot up.

“One-oh-one point one… nah…”

“What are you doing?” Keith said from behind.

Lance was busying himself with the dial, not looking around while continuing to watch the numbers change, cranking the dial some more. “One-oh-four point five… nope, definitely not.”

“Uh, I asked you a question?”

Lance rolled his eyes, before he pursed his lips as he continued to think, half-ignoring the question. “Maybe I should go down instead of up,” he muttered to himself.

A foot tapping from behind reminded Lance that, oh right, Keith was still there. “Sorry,” he said, genuinely not remembering what Keith had asked him five seconds ago. He cranked the dial counterclockwise and watched as the numbers went down. “What were you saying?”

“I _asked_ what you were doing?”

Lance whipped his head around to shoot Keith a winsome smile over his shoulder. “You’ll see.” Then he turned back to the panel. “Well, if this works…” he murmured.

Station 97.5, 95.6, 93.3 no, no, classic rock? No. Nothing against classic rock, but no.

The volume was super low and he knew he’d have to turn it up once he found a decent station. Everything else was coming up static. “Ninety-six five—oops, meant to go down.” Lance continued to get distracted with the sound of Keith’s foot tapping impatiently on the floor of the cruiser. “Do you mind?” he asked.

The tapping stopped.

“Hm…. Maybe I should try AM?” Lance was talking to himself, but Keith was clearly listening, trying to figure out what the hell Lance was _doing_.

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Oh wait! Mod FM maybe?” Lance stopped twisting the dial at hyperspeed, kind of how he used to do during long car rides when there was nothing good to listen to, back on earth. His ma would _always_ tell him to stop turning the dial so fast. _How can you even see the numbers, crazy? You’ll make yourself go cross-eyed._

Keith walked up to the control panel, hovering just behind Lance. He gave the dashboard a once-over. “What’s the big blue button over there for?” he asked, more curious than anything.

Lance jumped. “ _Jesus,_ buddy! You don’t just fucking teleport behind people like that.” He inched away from Keith like the guy had sprouted an extra head.

Keith gave him a funny look. “I just… walked up behind you.”

“Yeah, like a fucking ninja. Don’t _do_ that, man.”

“Sorry,” Keith held up his hands, although he wasn’t really sure what he’d done wrong. Then he eyed the blue button again, the one that sort of looked like a paw print. “I just wanted to know what that button in the corner was for." He pointed. "It’s got a glass cover on it. Just thought it might be important.” He shrugged.

Lance looked to where Keith had pointed.

“Oh, that’s just the cruiser’s homing signal.”

“Ahh…”

It took a second.

Lance’s eyes flew wide.

“Oh my god, I literally fucking _forgot_ about the fucking _homing signal._ ”

“You forg—? No, Lance wait-!” Keith reached out to grab Lance’s arm, but it was already on its way down.

Keith did the first thing that came to mind and tackled him.

 _“Ow!_ The hell--” Keith slammed into Lance— just before Lance could hit the blue button. He’d gotten the case flipped up, but the so-called homing signal remained untouched.

Keith shoved Lance out of the way, practically tackling him to the ground before the Galra ex-prince got his royal ass back up and stormed over to the control panel, flipping the glass cover back over the button so hard, it was a surprise it didn’t crack.

“Keith are you crazy?” Lance scrambled up off the ground, chest heaving. “My team won’t find me if I can’t--”

“The _Galra will_ find you if you switch that thing on, dammit! Didn’t you learn _anything_ when I took out that fucking tracker?” Keith looked livid, his breathing was labored and it was a grim reminder to Lance that Keith still hadn’t made a full recovery. Keith unconsciously reached up to wrap an arm around his waist, gently pressing over the area where the wound must still be healing.

Lance’s shoulders sagged. “It was a clean signal,” he said, eyes cast down. Mimicking Keith without really meaning to, he brought a hand up to rest on his shoulder, a few inches away from the bandaging. The area that Keith had cut into didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. “It would’ve been pretty hard to intercept.”

Keith’s frown deepened. His breathing had evened out a little, but he still looked angry. “You know the Galra have their ways.”

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway… I’m sorry,” Lance said. And he meant it. Because although it was good to know he wouldn’t be caught by the Galra on account of some slip up, it was also disheartening to realize that the signal would never have reached its intended targets anyway.

They were too far away, and his cruiser still wasn’t totally fixed.

“The signal wouldn't be strong enough from all the way out here,” he said quietly. “I totally forgot. I don’t think I fixed the signal chip right, either - they’re not gonna pick up anything unless they have a satellite ten times stronger than NASA’s entire system combined.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

Meanwhile, Pidge Gunderson was busy being a goddamn genius.

Allura took off from the docking station the minute Pidge sent coordinates to the white cruiser. They were estimates, really, but they were good enough. In no time at all, Allura was already on her way. Against Coran’s, Hunk’s, and even Pidge’s best wishes, she was going after Lance and Shiro. If nothing else, Allura was the bravest person, alien or otherwise, that they’d ever known. Probably.

Hunk and Pidge sat in the control room, with Coran doing some minor work at the panels.

He’d gone silent ever since Allura left. And it was no small feat to make _Coran_ go silent. The man loved to talk.

Pidge sat in a flimsy chair she’d dragged in from the rec room, feet propped up on a stool. Hunk didn’t even tell her off for bad manners. He was too busy worrying.

But he also wasn’t sitting around twiddling his thumbs, no sir. Since Allura’s departure, he’d been helping Coran run some diagnostics, just to make sure Allura’s cruiser had a clear signal and a functioning particle barrier. Even with a nice polishing up, all of the cruisers still fell a bit short when it came to decent particle barriers.

Hunk ran another line of code into the system, keeping an eye on the white cruiser's flight path. 

Meanwhile, Pidge clutched Froggy the Wonder Walkman in her hands, fiddling and cleaning like it was her only mission in life. You’d think the signal hopper was actually a newborn, the way she handled it. Every thirty seconds, she’d type in more coordinates and send a _blip_ out into the cosmos. One by one, the blips returned with nothing to show for it besides abandoned planets, or lifeless meteor belts. Or just… empty space.

Another _blip._

Pidge sighed, waiting for another dead return signal.

The screen _Ping_ ’d.

Pidge shot up in her chair, glasses slipping down her nose.

“Uh, you guys?”

Hunk and Coran stopped what they were doing and looked around to where Pidge was tapping an excited finger on Froggy. “I think… I think I just got a radio wave.”

She squinted her eyes to make sure she’d read it right. Yeah, those were coordinates. The waves had come from some random radio station broadcasting out in the middle-of-nowhere, space. But it was still in the same galaxy as Arus, thank god. Far away, but not so far that all hope was lost.

“It’s from Lance.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Lance had all eyes and ears on the radio. Homing signal forgotten, he now had his heart set on finding the right music station.

“Hey, Billy Joel!” Lance remarked from the dashboard.

Rolling his eyes, Keith leaned against the wall of the cruiser and picked imaginary lint from his shirt. “Who’s he?” he asked, entirely serious, with just a hint of curiosity.

Lance whirled around. “You’ve _never heard_ of-- oh. Right.” He backtracked a second when he remembered. “I guess the Galra don’t listen to a whole lot of Earth music, do they?”

Keith snorted. “Try none at all… Well,” he shrugged to himself, thoughtful. “Unless you count what they showed us in the Earth culture studies class we had to take before joining up.”

“The Galra have a class called Earth culture studies,” Lance deadpanned.

Keith nodded. “I had to listen to something called ‘The Beatles.’”

Lance gaped. “The Galra know about the _Beatles?”_ He asked, eyes bugging.

“Uhh yeah,” Keith said, nonchalant. “It was a little confusing. Most of the words didn’t make much sense and most Galra hate music anyway, so everyone I knew hated the class. But I liked one or two of their songs. The instrumentation was fascinating.” A smile formed at his lips, and Lance’s eyes were drawn to it, before he snapped himself out of it. “The instructor told us they used things called ‘violins’ and ‘cellos.’”

“Wo-ow.”

Keith scowled. “Are you making fun of me?”

Lance put on his best serious face. “What? No.” He waved a hand dismissively at Keith, who pouted.

 _Dammit, that’s fucking ridiculous._ Why was that so cute?

Lance cleared his throat. “Not making fun of you,” he reassured, then thumped his chest to clear his throat some more. “I just mean - _wow._ I’ve got a lot of Earth culture to catch you up on.”

An eyebrow raised dramatically, coupled with a smirk from Keith. Lance thought he might die right there.

 _Keep it together, man,_ he told himself desperately.

“Oh?” Keith said.

There was a pause in which Lance had to mentally collect himself.

When he did, he rebounded with full confidence and a swagger in his step. He stepped back towards the dashboard and reached for another dial, because damn it, he was not going to stand for this. Keith had to hear some real music even if it killed him. “ _Oh_ yeah. Gotta catch you up on the classics, m’dude.” He played around with the dial and watched the numbers on the screen drop.

First, it was just a lot of crackling. Then the radio warmed to life, where the station’s host had just finished introducing the next song.

A piano melody, warm and sweet. Soft harmonies. Lance gasped and leaned over the dashboard, smiling. When he turned back around to watch Keith’s reaction, his eyes were all crinkled with delight.

“I love this song,” Lance breathed.

In an instant, the overconfidence fell away. The facade was replaced with something Keith might have interpreted more as… as shy, maybe. Or at the very least, more unsure than he had been before.

But that wasn’t like Lance. Lance was shameless, and to prove it, he shook off the hesitant look as soon as a voice started to sing out over the cruiser’s still-grainy speakers.

_Desperado… Why don’t you come to your senses?_

*****

**()0()**

*****

As Keith watched, he suddenly got to see a totally different side of Lance than the one he’d grown used to in the past ten days.

It was… it was strangely nice, how he shut his eyes and began to hum, swaying to the music. The tune was unfamiliar and surprisingly gentle. Keith never thought Earth music could be something like this, having been introduced to things like “Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Country,” and he hadn’t liked either of the songs he’d heard from those categories back in that class.

But this… it was good. Whatever it was.

_Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds boy, she’ll beat you if she’s able…_

The instruments sounded appealing, and he recognized one instrument constantly playing along in the mix - a piano, he remembered the name of it.

When Lance opened his eyes, Keith’s breath was lost on him. Lance looked soft, no armor or Bayard, just the CosMesh and a long-sleeved t-shirt. And he was stepping towards Keith with one hand outstretched.

“You ever dance in that Galra academy?” he asked so carefully, eyes big and guileless, half a smile on his lips, and Keith felt himself shaking his head, _No_.

“You wanna learn?” He held out a hand.

What was Keith supposed to do?

_Deeesperado, oh you ain’t gettin no younger… your pain and your hunger, they’re driving you home…_

He didn’t mean to fall for those eyes, he really didn’t. When Lance held out his hand, fingernails still a bit caked in desert dirt and hair still a little damp from his shower, Keith didn’t know if he _should_ want to. He wasn’t… it wasn’t something he was all that familiar with.

And what was more, he’d never danced a day in his life. Galra didn’t really, uh, do that.

But Lance was looking at him like the world as they knew it might shatter if Keith didn’t take that hand and humor him.

_...Your prison is walkin through this world all alone…_

Something else entered the music, all of a sudden. Louder beats, something else that sounded like how the shimmering waves of a distant planet’s waters looked, and Keith’s soul was a solar flare.

Without thinking, he took the hand.

_It’s hard to tell the nighttime from the day..._

Lance pulled him closer, until they were only a few inches apart. It was completely dark outside, the only thing that existed was the cruiser, and Keith, and Lance. Contents from both the toolbox and the first aid kit were strewn around their feet, but that didn’t stop Lance one bit. “This is how we dance on Earth, mullet man,” he said, so quiet that it was almost strange, and although there wasn’t a smirk on his face, there was one hidden in his voice.

This was still Lance, definitely. He hadn’t taken the painkillers, so lord only knew he was sober enough to be fully in control of himself. And he was.

And Keith was just along for the ride.

“What do I do?” Keith whispered, afraid that if he spoke too loud he might ruin some Earth custom that prohibited speaking too loud during a dance.

Lance huffed a warm laugh. His hands were warm, too, where one held Keith’s as the other fell to hover just over his waist. “Just put your hands on my shoulders and I’ll lead. Watch and learn, princess.”

Keith was too nervous to offer any sort of comeback. This was waaay out of his comfort zone, and Lance totally knew it.

With a swallow, Keith lifted his hands and placed them on Lance’s shoulders, as instructed. Lance smiled and did as promised, leading Keith in an easy back-and-forth, just sort of allowing them both to sway to the building music.

When Keith looked at Lance’s face, blue eyes sparkled a little, and when Keith realized he was thinking about another person like _that,_ he actually thought he might vomit.

But… but he did have to admit, this wasn’t too bad.

“~Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses…”

Lance was singing along with the music.

Startled, Keith almost brought his hands away, but Lance only grinned and placed his own hand more firmly on Keith’s waist. “I gotcha,” he said with a wink. Really, he _was_ shameless when he wanted to be.

He kept singing. It was so soft that Keith wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking. How did Lance know all the words anyway?

“~You better let somebody love you…”

The words resounded in his head, rattling his thoughts into a suddenly-chaotic mess. They were just _lyrics_. Keith knew that.

But the space behind his ribs still burned, set on fire like someone had reached into his sternum and shot it full of tranquilizer serum. It was almost too much, but he wanted to keep letting Lance sway. Wanted to keep dancing.

Because maybe he was enjoying this, and damn it if it felt wrong because he was Galra and Lance was human.

Fuck, wasn’t Keith a little bit human anyway?

“~...Before it to-oo… late…”

The singing stopped. The piano kept going, lilting and pretty, until finally it slowed, and then stopped, too. The rest of the instruments faded.

It took them a moment longer to stop swaying.

Just as the music ended, though, the radio announcer came back on to inform the listeners that the music would continue right after the break. And thus, thoroughly killed whatever mood there had been.

Lance jerked back at the loud voice and brought his hands away.

With a feeling that he would deny was disappointment, Keith stood where he was, although he also let his hands drop back down to his sides. The announcer’s voice was the only sound in the cruiser.

Keith took his own step back, putting some space between them. “I should…” he cleared his throat.

“Get to bed,” Lance finished the thought for him. “Right… me too.”

For a beat, they just stood there.

“I’m gonna just go, then.” WIth that, Keith turned around and walked out of the cockpit, carefully avoiding various instruments scattered over the floor. He left through the open airlock without another word, leaving Lance with a horrible, twisted feeling in his stomach.

God, he was such a bleeding heart. He didn’t know why he was falling for this guy -- even though he so wasn’t -- or if he’d just ruined something, maybe been too forward?

And the timing had just been so weird??? Like, who goes from getting a tracker cut out of their shoulder to slow dancing with the guy who cut it out in the first place? What human slow dances with a Galra?  _What the shit, Lance???_

He liked Keith. But he wasn’t sure if _that_ was a good idea at all. That stupid royal pain with a mullet, the purple twat and Lance’s mark (read: _former_ mark) had just danced with him. To _Desperado._ His mother’s favorite song - it was literally the song she used to sing to put Lance to sleep when he was a baby.

And he’d just offered to _dance_ with _Prince Keith Kogane,_ ace pilot of the _Galra military_ , literally Galra _royalty,_ to that song. And Keith hadn’t turned down the offer.

And they’d danced.

And Lance’s soul was a solar flare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey again guys! So I've got the rest of the story mapped out and I'm so excited for everything to come. Absolutely feel free to leave your thoughts and comments, I really look forward to hearing from you and appreciate the feedback so much. The support means everything! <3 Thanks again!
> 
> The [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-bwXhts8Zg) that they danced to
> 
>  **Note (1/18/2018)** So, I've been getting some people asking if this fic is discontinued. It's not! I've been meaning to update for a while now, but life got a little intense and with the double major, trying to graduate in 4 years and looking for internships, it's been a lot, and I've gotta prioritize. I'm amazed that people are sticking with the story though, it means a lot. Hopefully I have the time to update soon, but I can't really guarantee that it'll be as soon as next week or next month. We'll get there!  
>  Sending all the love <3


	15. Hey Jude, Don't be Afraid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lance is a disney prince BUT also badass because god knows he deserves to be. Keith does stuff too but it's mostly passing the fuck out since his life sucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhh listen so I know it's been a year but I can explain...?

His feet weighed a thousand tons, but he kept running.

“Move, move!” someone called from up ahead.

Their unlikely savior in the black and purple bodysuit was fast, Shiro could barely keep up. He ran, pumped his arms and gritted his teeth with the effort. So tired. So _freaking_ tired. He could feel how drained he’d become since getting to the warship. The amount of time he’d been running was lost on him. The time he’d been kept imprisoned on the ship, too. Maybe a few days, but maybe weeks. Maybe a month. He should’ve kept track, but it wasn’t like he really had the energy for it and now wasn’t really the time for reflecting on the ever-fascinating passage of time.

There was a group of other prisoners - also newly rescued - running behind him. _How_ a single person could have freed them all from their cells so quickly was a mystery, but there was no time to ask questions. All he could do was to keep running.

The sentries had begun to catch on. A few had since tracked activity and at least five sentries were now hot on their tail, guns readied. No shots had been fired yet but that was hardly a comfort. They would come.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro saw one of the sentries catching up, reaching its arm out to grab at one of the smaller prisoners.

 _Shit_ , he thought. He had to turn back.

“Hess!” Shiro slowed, turning around as he threw a punch at the sentry. He missed, but the answering swipe from the sentry got him a clean slice through the flesh of his right shoulder, and he yelled in pain. Shiro swiped again and this time his prosthetic plunged into its intended target, metal through metal.

Artificial guts sparked around the glowing hand before he tore it back out, letting the sentry sink to the floor in a heap. With a grunt, Shiro lunged for Hess, who was shaking, and hauled her up before wasting no time as he broke into a sprint, carrying the girl limp-bridal-style in the opposite direction. Chaos erupted behind them as more sentries charged through an unseen doorway, with Shiro barely paying attention. All he could focus on was the promise of survival, of freedom, and followed the path through the maze of corridors, of cells, and of fallen sentries.

Wait… fallen?

In the flitting moments Shiro had to take in his surroundings as he ran with the small crowd of escapees, he caught sight of scattered sentries, gutted and motionless on the floor. They’d obviously been kicked to the side to make some room.

Whoever these rescuers were, they’d certainly come prepared.

He kept moving. They had an escape pod to catch.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Tajny felt exactly how it sounded- Tiny.

The airlock to the blue cruiser was shut.

Silence.

Lance lay on his back, on top of the self-inflating sleeping mat he’d found rolled up in the emergency storage unit. A folded up emergency blanket was tucked under his head as a pillow.

He couldn’t sleep.

 

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Half a mile away, Keith lay awake, trying to ward off the oncoming anxiety. Hiding here in the medical tent meant no one would bother him, no one would ask him questions. And of course, no one would try to kill him just because of who he was. _What_ he was.

But Lance…

Lance had helped him. Keith didn’t really think Lance had done it just because he owed Keith for helping him off that battleship. Or maybe he thought he did owe Keith something? Life debts, crazy stuff like that - humans were intensely loyal in a way that Keith had a hard time understanding, but all the same, he was so… drawn to it. And he hated that he was.

Hate was a strong word, it wasn't like the feeling was horrible. Nah, it was much closer  _weird._ Uncomfortable. It took him out of his element, and that was always a scary and dangerous place to be. Keith honestly felt more comfortable fighting eleven Galra sentries barehanded than confronting his ever-present emotions. Fuck those things.

But the dancing?

That'd been a different matter. Galaxies different.

He liked Lance. Accepting it wasn’t too bad when he knew that at least they’d had one, fleeting bonding moment. A real one, real enough that there was no mistaking it for a weird dream.

Even if this whole thing ended up breaking Keith’s heart in two he knew that at the very least, he’d learned how to dance. At least _that_ meant something.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Allura was making pretty good time. The white cruiser was one of the faster ones, although it’d scarcely been used within the last century or so. She patted the dashboard fondly as she steered through a garden of meteoroids. Allura was perhaps a day’s journey from the coordinates that Pidge’s signal hopper had picked up.

For most of the trip the cruiser was silent, and sometimes a little silence was nice. Allura didn’t particularly mind taking a break from the chaos of Voltron Headquarters, and from Coran’s constant worrying. She did _not_ enjoy being coddled.

A light on her dashboard blipped, tearing her out of the silence.

The noise hadn’t been loud or anything, but it was enough to get her attention as she turned to eye one of the small dots on her dashboard, which was now blinking a faint orange. A sign that there was another spacecraft nearby. She frowned and reached out a hand to pull up the holoscreen, but before she could do it the dot went dark, just as suddenly as it had lit up.

That was… interesting.

Maybe she was just stressing herself out. The signal could just as easily have been warning her of a cargo craft thousands of kilometres away. Her cruiser was just finicky. And old. Or at least she hoped that was the case. Whether or not her cruiser got her to her target destination in five more hours or five more days, it didn’t matter. She would do whatever it took to get her team back.

No - her _family_.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

“Wh-where are we going?”

The gash in his shoulder wasn’t too deep to worry about needing stitches or bleeding out, but it was deep enough. God _damn_ did that mother hurt. Red oozed and seeped into the torn fabric, staining the already filthy uniform with even more color. Shiro grimaced.

“The safest place for any of us right now,” the person in the pilot’s seat murmured, reaching out to tap at the control panel. Shiro felt the thrust of the tiny shuttle as the entire spacecraft shuddered from the force of it. “A hidden planet. The R.A. prefers to call it ‘Planet O.’”

“R.A.?” Shiro grimaced, pressing at the gash in his arm while his gaze switched to Hess, out cold but securely fastened in her seat behind him. Her pitch-colored skin looked just a shade less dark than it’d been back in the kill ring. Behind her seat was a closed hatch, harboring a dozen or so rescued prisoners on the other side. The shuttle was big enough for at least that many.

“Planet O?” Shiro asked, tearing his gaze away as another wave of pain hit.

“The Red Alliance,” said the stranger. Their head was hooded, their face masked. Where their eyes would be there was only the faint blue glow of special lenses, something Shiro had seen before but never as part of a mask like this. The mask itself fit snug - a holographic cloaking device, maybe? “Our base is located on the planet of Osvoboni. Now silence, you must be tired.”

“I… yeah, a little, but-”

“But nothing. _Sleep_ , Paladin, we will talk later.”

No, Shiro wanted to talk _now._

Even as his rescuer said it, though, there was no denying that Shiro, while he hated to admit it, was beyond exhausted. Frankly, he felt like he could sleep for a year.

But he was so _close_ to figuring out what this Red Alliance was. And how did this person know he was a Paladin?

So many questions. If his vision could stop going fuzzy for just a few more minutes, that would be nice. He'd like to know if this guy was the same one who'd opened the gates to let him out of the kill ring. Wondered if they were Hess's rescuer, too. Or was this guy just their ride? There had to be more than just one person, no one could pull off a stunt like that on  Galra war ship singlehandedly.

“Wait, how do you know that I’m-”

“What did I just say?”

With some effort, Shiro pushed himself upright, straight-backed in the passenger seat of the shuttle’s stuffy cockpit. “I just wanna know who you are. Why you rescued me.”

A pause.

Finally, the hooded savior in the pilot seat gave a sigh and reached into their hood. Something _click_ ’ed.

With a swish, the hologram of a mask slid away to reveal-

“You- You’re Galra,” Shiro bit out, heart beating faster. Oh god, what’d he done? Had this all been a trap? And letting _Hess_ get captured? How could he have been so stupid-

“I’m not one of the bad ones, Shiro.” His rescuer - a _Galra_ \- was looking back at Shiro with an expression that was… surprisingly _not_ angry. Yellow eyes that looked familiar and dangerous, but in this context… not threatening, and Shiro’s instincts were good enough to sense when there was a threat nearby. This guy just didn’t strike him that way.

Which was new, for a Galra.

Also new was  _this_ Galra knew his name.

“My name is Ulaz. I work with the Blade of Marmora, a resistance group that has since become part of the Red Alliance. We have been working with the R.A. for about four years now, although only a few know it. We are an extremely classified unit working against the empire.”

“Like Black Ops,” Shiro muttered without thinking. It earned him a frown from his rescuer. “Sorry,” he said. “I just mean, you’re about as secret as it gets, right?”

“And we would prefer it remained that way, Paladin.”

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Another day of back-breaking, hardly rewarding labor passed before Lance was permitted to run straight back to his cruiser, where he could continue to work on the remaining repairs. Not much left to do now, just tighten up some of the more reactive tech and maybe tune up the wiring that enabled the particle barrier.

God, he wished Hunk was here.

Or Pidge.

Even Coran would’ve been a welcome right hand man in these trying times.

The cruiser’s radio crackled and fuzzed as he worked around a pile of scrap metal and tools. Different station from the night before - a lot more of the classics. Tonight he actually _was_ in the mood for classic rock, which currently included a bit more of the Eagles, Queen (he was unashamed to admit that he sang every single part of “Bohemian Rhapsody” with so, so many voice cracks), and more Billy Joel, which he appreciated.

Right now, with the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” crackling in and out of existence as Lance worked, the cruiser felt almost cozy. He’d already showered away all (OK,  _most_ ) of the purple sand and dirt, and thankfully it hadn’t been as bad as yesterday. That shit got into _all_ the little nooks and crannies. All. Of them.

His CosMesh felt comfortable, protective. Felt familiar. His tee-shirt was an added bonus, something he really was glad to have stowed away on the cruiser all those months ago as a just-in-case. And uh, thankfully some extra boxer briefs, too. Bless his past self for thinking ahead. The sleeves of the worn out shirt were long enough that they fell to the middle of his palms and he pinched at the end of one, rubbing the careworn fabric like it was his safety blanket. 

His boots, on the other hand, had long been stashed away in lieu of the cloth-leather-whatever boots that the Tajnyans had insisted on giving him, saying he was better off with them while trekking through sand and bone-dry dirt. His watch remained, one of the few items he normally kept, whether or not he was in his sniper gear. In fact he barely wore the gear on Tajny, considering it was a little restrictive for hard, manual labor - although his wrist cuffs stayed on him at all times, even when he showered (waterproof, obviously). Not that the cuffs were much use now. They were mainly used for comms and, well, god only knew how long it'd take to get in range of a decent signal these days. They were basically wearable paperweights.

They still felt grounding, though. A reminder of who he was, even without the armor.

The people of Tajny had quickly grown used to him around. A human. A paladin of the team that called themselves Voltron. A sniper who didn't carry a gun at his hip at all times - although there were moments when Lance itched for his bayard, never knowing when he would need it. When he would need to protect. These people... they were special. A resistance. A beacon of hope, hope for a future where the Galra couldn't touch them or anyone ever again... 

The aluminum wrapper of his protein bar - one of the last in his emergency stock - crinkled as he took another bite, chewing lazily, used to the chalky aftertaste of whey protein mixed with shitty chocolate. What he wouldn’t give for a home cooked meal. Hell he’d take space goo at this point. Do you _know_ how gross protein bars taste when they’re all you’ve been eating for three dinners straight?

He already knew what his _Ma_ would say if she could see him now.

_Lance, you are already so skinny, but this is something else mijo. Find some real food, yeah? You walk around lookin' like a stick person drawing, ah?_

He didn't think he'd lost too much weight since being captured on the warship, but yeah, he figured he'd probably dropped at least a couple pounds. That much was clear by the way his CosMesh didn't feel quite so tight anymore. With the manual labor he'd at least retained some of his hard-earned muscle, courtesy of Allura and her ass kickings - sorry, training drills.

He checked his dashboard for the time: 3:00 a.m., SET. Shoot, had he really been working that long? The night guards back at the camp would be switching shifts right around now. The perfect window of opportunity to sneak into the medical tent if he wanted…

_~Any time you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain._

_Don’t carry the world, upon, your shoulders..._

 He hummed along, not really remembering the words. If it wasn't White Album he probably didn't know the words.

As hard as he tried to drown out any thoughts of a certain Galra, his brain kept on grabbing him by the ear and dragging him back anyway. An aggressive nudge from his subconscious, if you will.

He really hadn’t left things with Keith particularly… smoothed over, the night before. They’d danced and then uh, well... that was pretty much it. Done and done. Had it even, like, _meant_ anything? Lance could reluctantly admit to himself that Keith was a big part of why he couldn’t fall asleep at night - and _not_ in a good way.  

Yeah, obviously with a war on, that wasn’t super helpful in the sleep department either, but Lance was a lot better at dealing with long-range combat more so than with close-range _feelings._

Okay that was a lie, he actually considered himself _great_ at showing his feelings. But with Keith?

Keith wasn’t just some random guy or girl or whatever. Keith was... how would one put it?

Oh, that’s _right_. Galra.

Just him and his dumb prejudices, right? Well whatever, Lance knew plenty about prejudice. Down on Earth at the garrison, he’d been a boy from Cuba. The son of immigrants. Had an accent before going through the garrison, and with sexuality and stuff all thrown in with it, Lance had tasted the good ol’ prejudice cocktail more than once. He did get it. He really did. That’s why he wanted to make a freaking effort.

 _~Hey Jude, don’t let me down._ _You have found her… now go and get her..._

Effort was so exhausting, though. After a bit more fiddling with a couple of stubborn wires that didn’t even go together, Lance dropped them to the floor, running a hand down his face as he made a frustrated noise.

Fuck. God damn it. He had to talk to Keith, didn’t he?

That dumb rational part of his brain was yelling, _yeah you do, dumbass._

Because it was either he talk to Keith and get some goddamn closure, or he would slowly grow more and more emotionally constipated. To hell if it was three in the morning, he was gonna go talk to Keith right the heck now.

Sometimes he had to remind himself that they were still at war. _Duh_.

It wasn't like they had all the time in the world to figure these things out the slow, stupid way did they?

 _~_ _Don’t you know that it’s just you? Hey Jude, you’ll do…._

Before he knew it he was discarding the tools in his hands and jogging right down the steps from the cockpit, breaking into a run at the thought of what he was going to do. Didn't even bother to switch the radio off.

What _was_ he going to do? Tell Keith how he felt? Ask if he felt the same way? Maybe just wanted some closure to make sure he wasn’t going flipping insane here??

Lance had done some coo coo for cocoa puffs bullshit in his day, but he wouldn’t exactly call himself crazy.

 

Yet here he was, running dramatically across a stretch of desert like this was the motherfucking Lion King.

 

Maybe he wasn’t thinking, or maybe it was just the thinner air of the planet’s atmosphere, but right now everything in him was telling him that he had to talk to Keith, had to do it _now_ . He doubted Keith was getting any more sleep than he was, he _had_ to be awake, didn’t he?

The guy practically screamed _insomniac._

God his legs hurt. He should’ve been too tired for this. 

*****

**()0()**

*****

When he got to the medical tent, a little winded, the guards were already gone. Replacements hadn’t come yet. Figures. Everyone was probably tired as hell, did anyone ever really want to take night shift?

And should he knock or something?

He eventually decided it would be stupid to knock, and gently pulled aside draped cloth that served as a doorway.

“Keith?” Lance whispered, stepping lightly past the curtain.

The first thing he saw was Keith, laying in his cot. Something felt wrong, though. Like that feeling you get when you step into an unfinished basement to do the laundry and you're all alone, and it's too quiet, and you just  _feel_ like you're being watched from one of the dark corners.

“Here for a romantic _rendezvous?_ ” A voice that Lance could never, ever forget slithered into his ears. Blood that had previously been pumping through his veins from anticipation chilled to ice.

Lance’s gaze snatched away from Keith’s unconscious form. On instinct his body tensed, waiting for an electric shock that never came. He vaguely remembered something he’d once learned from Shiro, about how trauma could stay with you in little ways. Could sneak up on you. Could ruin you if you let it get under your skin and control you.

Managing to shove the feeling back down, only then did Lance turn around.

Sure enough, Haxus was grinning at him.

“I am afraid his royal highness is somewhat... disinclined to waking up at present.” He smirked at Lance, whose head turned so quickly he felt something crack. His eyes flickered from Keith’s face, to the table next to his cot.

On the table was a nearly empty syringe, the cylinder shiny like new. Too new to belong to the medical stash kept in the tents. Then he noticed the sheets, which were strewn over the ground, the shitty pillow lying pitifully at the other end of the tent. Clearly Haxus had meant to take Keith by surprise, but Keith had very clearly not gone down without a fight. Now Keith lay on the cot, sedated, his chest moving up and down with shallow breaths.

Lance’s heart almost shot out of his chest when those pale lips moved faintly, the smallest sound escaping. “ _A-ance..”_ Lance caught the barest movement of eyelashes flickering weakly, fear discernible even with just a sliver of those yellow eyes visible through cracked eyelids, before they shut again.

Lance’s nostrils flared. He didn't think he had ever hated someone so much in his entire life, but looking at Haxus, he knew and felt all of his anger boil to the surface. The interrogating, the torture, the manipulation, and now he had Keith unconscious in the medical tent, helpless and alone.

No one else would be here at this time, would they? The guards had already left to sleep, and the next shift hadn’t arrived yet. He was screwed. Worse.

Lance opened his mouth to shout.

Before he could make a sound, Haxus raised a finger at the same time he raised an eyebrow, grinning wickedly. "Ah ah... Wouldn't want to start anymore trouble, would we?" He cocked his head towards the cot.

Lance bared his teeth.

“I have jets in the air waiting for their cue to fire.” Haxus smirked, chuckling darkly in his gravelly, snakelike voice. “But it’s really up to you whether I give them that cue or not.”

Bullshit. Lance knew that no matter what he did, Haxus was going to call down his fighters sooner or later. Right now, in the moment, he had Lance right where he wanted him. All because Lance was a stupid idiot who just had to come running right into the trap.

“You piece of shit,” Lance spat, keeping his body angled in a way that he could bolt should Haxus so much as _try_ to take another step towards Keith.

"While I enjoy flattery as much as the next person, it's not going to get you anywhere." There was something positively jolly in the way he spoke. The voice of someone who was staring down a plate of delicious food.

“So, what, you’re here for Keith?” Lance asked, stalling.

“Already on first name terms with the prince, are we, Paladin?” Haxus sneered. Lance shuddered in disgust.

“And you want me to hand him over?”

“And tell me the whereabouts of Voltron Headquarters, obviously.”

“Yeah?” Lance said, pushing his luck as he continued to stall for time, trying to think of something he could do. Anything. Even if it was just to get Keith out of here safe. “You don’t have your fancy electric chair to hurt me here, buddy. If I wasn’t talking then, I’m sure as shit on a stick that I’m not talkin’ now.”

The sneer only deepened. Haxus took a threatening step closer to the cot where Keith was still out of it. Lance eyed him like a hawk, ready to defend. “It’s either you tell me what you know and leave me to take the prince, or I destroy this entire planet with the both of us and the prince still here.

“But either way I die, huh?” Lance grit through his teeth. He bent his knees a little more, curling his hands into fists. “Either way you’ll kill the Tajnyans.”

“I am afraid the people of this planet do throw a bit of a wrench into the Galra’s plan for creating a loyal empire, yes.” Then his eyes flickered to Keith, prone and pale. “And… something tells me you would sacrifice your life for his, no matter what was at stake for you.”

“Burn in hell, asshole.”

Tut-tutting, Haxus’s expression twisted into something much darker, something much more smug. “Oh but you see… you have already given me so much. You've led me and my troops to your base planet. Led me straight into your little _resistance_." He spat the last word out like it was something vile, something that needed to be stomped out and burned down. "Not to mention you’ve brought two very important people to me. Truly? I would deem this your own fault."

Every hair on Lance’s flesh stood on end.

“Two… what do you -”

“The Prince, obviously. As well as your dear friend, one of the last Alteans.”

...Allura?

 _No,_ Lance thought numbly,  _Allura couldn’t be here._

Right?

“She has followed you here to rescue you, oh _mighty_ paladin.” The Cheshire cat grin made Lance's stomach clench.

He had to be lying. Allura would never….

No, actually, she would. Crap.

“According to one of my sources,” Haxus drawled, rolling his shoulders calmly, “the princess has already landed. She’s probably on her way here as we speak.”

It couldn’t be-

Wait, but that must have meant she was close, didn’t it? And if she was close…

At least now he had something going for him. Trying not to smirk, Lance lifted his watch, holding his wrist level with his nose as he lifted an eyebrow to Haxus. “Maybe,” he said, going for cool and collected, “but you might be a little lacking in the element of surprise.”

With that, he jabbed his thumb onto the little black button on the side of the watch. The one specifically for close range warning signals. If Allura was close by, she would know that she needed to get out and get out soon.

The sneer on Haxus’s face was wiped clean, stretched into a line of confusion. “What have you done?” he hissed, taking another step forward. Lance didn’t move away.

“I warned her,” Lance said evenly. “Now she knows this is a trap. There’s no way she would play into your hands, Allura is one of the smartest people I know. And that’s really saying something.”

The look on the Galran’s face was one of purple fury.

“You… Why you little pest.”

He lunged.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

The second she landed and caught sight of the blue cruiser, she hopped out of the cockpit, ran to blue and beelined for the main hatch, but the open entryway revealed that no one was there.

The weak signal on her paladin’s gauntlet was starting up again. She checked her wrist. The screen showed a faint blue dot, so close…

She spotted the outline of a camp in the distance.

Then she saw the jets, many kilometres above her and quite difficult to make out if you hadn’t been trained to spot them, but they were there. She stopped in her tracks, her chest heavy with dread.

_Blip Blip Blip Blip Blip-_

Her eyes flew to her wrist cuff. That wasn’t just the tracker. It was a warning signal. If she hadn’t already seen the jets, she would have been surprised.

But Lance, telling her to run?

_Her?_

No, that wasn’t really her style.

An attack was nearly underway. Without a second thought, she pivoted and turned back around, straight back towards the white cruiser. With any luck she would be able to stall the attack and help those who were in danger of the coming firefight, but it would only work if she could manage to get a signal back to Lance. And she wasn’t even sure if he was wearing his paladin gear.

 

For all she knew, Lance wasn’t even here and this had all been one very, very convincing trap.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Lance dove for the table next to the cot, swiping blindly but managing to grab the syringe without stabbing himself in the hand. Without aiming he swung the thing around. It connected with Haxus’s neck, and the Galra screamed in pain.

That syringe had had barely a drop of sedative left. He’d only bought himself a few extra seconds of time but it was all he needed in order to shout for help.

"NIXYS!"

With any luck, someone had heard him. If not Nixys, then someone else. It didn’t matter, what mattered was that in who knew how long, this camp and the next were going to be blown to kingdom come. Unless he did something. He had to get Keith out of here. He had to get to his cruiser.

High on adrenaline and scared but determined as hell, Lance dove again, this time for Keith in the cot, and snatched at the holster in his belt. Thank god, the guy even slept with his knife. Wait, make that two knives. What a little sneak.

The hilt of this knife was thick and felt uneven in his palm, but it was his only defense.

“ _Gahh!”_

One of his ankles was yanked back hard and he lost his balance, although he somehow managed to keep a hold on the knife as he fell backwards, sprawling on the ground of the medical tent and rolling.

Suddenly Haxus was looming above him, a blaster pointed right at Lance’s face. No time to think, Lance kicked, a hybrid fighting style he’d picked up from Pidge. A little tae kwon do, and a lot of break dancing. The move sent Haxus on his ass with a _thud_ as the blaster skidded across the ground before hitting the wall.

It went off.

Lance yelled and saw the flash of purplish white, the sound of impact, and he shielded his eyes as he braced himself.

But it didn’t hit him.

Breathing hard, Lance lowered the shaky arm from his face, and he cringed at what he saw.

As a sniper, Lance was almost happy to say he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger. Even so, the damage was done. Haxus was...

But as he heard the first sounds of explosions not so far off in the distance, he knew that this fight was far from over.

As Lance scrambled unsteadily to his feet and threw back the entrance’s curtain, the fear returned with a vengeance.

 

The attack on Tajny had already begun.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

Allura's cruiser had barely touched down at the neighboring camp before she was aggressively punching the airstair button to let herself out.

Just a minute's sprint, nothing more, and she made it to the encampment, not sure where to go, but certain of one thing: she needed to evacuate as many people as possible. With a deep breath, she cupped her hands over her mouth and yelled, “EVACUATE! EVERYONE GET OUT, YOU MUST GET OUT NOW!”

The first four or five seconds of dead silence were deafening in her ears against the pounding of her heart.

 

Then the sound of clanging bells erupted, loud enough to reverberate through the entire camp. Alarms. _Thank the stars._

But then she heard another sound.

Explosions.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Lance felt awful. A little light-headed, too. His ankle felt all screwed up again and he knew his shoulder wasn't doing so hot.

They just couldn’t catch a break, could they?

He staggered over to the cot, still a little stunned as he collapsed to his knees by Keith’s side and stuck a hand out, grabbing Keith by a limp arm. “C’mon….” He shook the arm gently, but of course nothing happened. “Wake _up_ you idiot, now - now is seriously not the time for a coma, okay? Fucking _drama queen.._.” Even as he joked he knew Keith wasn’t waking up any time soon. At least he was breathing, and that was some consolation.

The rumbling sounds of desert being blasted with bombs was growing alarmingly close. He could hear the alarm bells ringing from somewhere in the camp, and shouting, lots of shouting. He wasn’t sure if Nixys had heard him yell or if she was too preoccupied to care, but either way, no one was coming to help him. It looked like this was a one-man job, and Lance just hoped the remaining adrenaline in his veins would be enough to push him forward.

“Guess we’re doin’ this the hard way huh?” he muttered, rolling his shoulders. Fine. Bridal style it is.

Something grabbed him from behind, encircling his throat with a death grip.

Lance yelped, only for the sound to be cut short as the vice-like grip tightened around him.

Lance fought for air as he gasped and choked, hands flying up to fight off the hands that were holding him there. Nails scrabbled and scratched over larger hands but his efforts were futile.

 

“I think… not,” a voice like a snake hissed in his ear. A snake that Lance thought he’d killed. But just like snakes, Haxus had had him fooled.

 

The grip tightened without warning and Lance’s world went a little fuzzy. He could faintly hear the Galran officer snap into a comms unit, “Send in backup.” The officer’s breaths were heavy and strained, and even as Lance began to lose consciousness he could figure out that at the very least, Haxus was weak, too. “We’re taking them both. Leave the princess to die on the planet, we can make do without her.”

Then Lance heard nothing and saw nothing.

This was starting to become a trend with him, wasn’t it?

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Allura saw the jet taking off from the camp, and she felt it in her gut. Lance was there. She had to get to that jet, or this entire mission was for nothing.

Well, not entirely for nothing.

Turning to look behind her at the group of refugees all huddled together in the back of her cruiser, Allura sent them an apologetic look. “Is everyone all right?” she asked, even though she knew better. How could they be? Their home was under attack. It was anything but all right.

“Will we have time to go back for the rest of them?” a strong, concerned voice cut through the group. Allura caught sight of a small figure as they pushed their way through the gaggle of refugees, her head wrapped in cloth but her face uncovered to reveal grey skin and enormous, intelligent eyes. “Wait,” she said, pulling the cloth away from her mouth to tuck it beneath her chin. “With all due respect, your highness, we can’t just leave the rest of our people to die here.”

Allura knew this just as well as anyone. But the battle… this was not a fair one. They didn’t have time, and they didn’t have the backup. She’d been caught by surprise like some untrained mercenary and now an entire planet was going to suffer for her lack of judgment. Everything was a mess.

“I will do my best to keep you safe,” she answered, confident even though she knew that the rest of her passengers would hold her to that. A few more people shuffled around nervously. The one who had spoken up stared ahead and gripped a knife tight in her hand. “Take us to the one who called in the jets. We will take care of them.”

Grim, Allura nodded. The girl’s gaze was piercing, and Allura could only hold it for so long before she looked away, guilt beginning to churn in her gut.

“Hold tight,” she said. “This will all be over soon.” Then she turned back around and grasped the controls more firmly. “I hope,” she murmured.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

He came to with a foggy head and his heart pounding, the rush of coming back sending him to a seated position as he gasped for air, legs curling towards his chest. His lungs burned, he hated the feeling. It was worse than running a mile in high altitude. Was he alone? He didn’t think he was, he had to get his bearings, he had to--

His training, right.

_Focus._

Lance was on a jet. Everything had a purple tint, the chrome and glass all smooth and streamlined. Current tech. A dark screen stared blankly at him from across the way.

Haxus’s jet, if he had to guess, and they were already in the air. Only just taking off, if the hesitant shuddering of the aircraft was anything to go by. Never an easy thing-- to fly in the middle of a desert where windstorms weren’t exactly a freak occurrence.

Groaning, he rolled his bad shoulder as he hesitantly brought up his other hand to brush across his throat, and winced. He knew there were bruises already beginning to bloom, even if he couldn’t see.

“So the Paladin awakens.”

It came from just a few feet away, from behind, where the jet’s controllers and dashboard lived.

Lance’s skin prickled beneath his CosMesh. It was like one of those nightmares where, just when you think you’ve woken up, you realize that it’s just another layer of the nightmare. This layer was even more screwed up than the last. Lance groaned but bit his lip to stop it from happening again, aware of how weak he must look. At least he didn’t look like Haxus, though.

When he turned to see, the sight offered but the tiniest relief:

In this state, they weren't too badly matched. Both of them were weakened and Lance wasn’t quite as injured as he was just queasy and shaky, and obviously caught off guard. Y’know, being strangled and waking up in a Galra jet. Good stuff. His Ma would probably say it built character.

A chuckle. Throaty and low and so very smug, it made Lance want to hurl onto the floor.

Haxus looked closer to death than Lance felt, which was saying a lot. The broken Galra stood hunched over the jet’s control panel -still leaking blue from beneath the shredded chestplate where the blaster had hit. He coughed up a glob of blood and phlegm before he spat on the ground close to Lance, who grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut, desperately willing this to all be a bad dream. He was going to wake up on Arus any minute now, and his team was going to be safe, and no one would be dead. A dying Galra wouldn’t be bleeding out behind him as they both watched a planet get leveled by a fleet of war jets.

The Galran officer was clearly close to death and he and Lance both knew it, but it still felt like Lance had lost. He _had_ lost. A choking sound hit Lance’s ears and a second later he realized it had come from the back of his own throat. The jet soared straight up into the air as the engine came to life and Lance’s stomach flipped like a silver dollar pancake. From his spot on the floor by the floor-to-ceiling windscreen, Lance could see the entire camp from here. What he saw was a nightmare come true.

It was barely getting light out, and it would continue to be grey and overcast with rainless clouds for a few hours yet but even through the gloom, there was no mistaking what had transpired below. And it was still going on.

Laser beams from the heavens ripped into indigo dirt, throwing chunks of desert into the air. Flaming objects, orange like Earth sunsets, fell from countless mercenary jets. Explosives. As Lance watched helplessly from the cockpit of Haxus's own jet, tents, huts, the main encampment and the other camp in the distance, now visible from up in the air, all began to crumble under fire. All the outcroppings of guard tents, the firepits, all of the storage units packed with supplies… one by one, the explosives hit their targets. With one deadly _boom_ after another, muffled through the glass Lance leaned against, the resistance base was rapidly being reduced to smoke and ash.

A matter of minutes, nothing more. It would only be a matter of minutes before everything was obliterated.

They weren’t so far above ground yet that Lance could possibly miss the bodies amidst the carnage.

A choking sound escaped Lance’s throat. He felt sick, tasting bile at the back of his mouth as he watched. Unable to bear another second, he squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. No, he was awake and this was very real.

Haxus chuckled again, and Lance forced himself to look away from the window. Away from the carnage. The proof of his failure to protect. Even with his eyes shut, he could see it all playing out before him as though the backs of his eyelids were giant theatre screens, his guilty brain a heinous projector.

“Open your eyes, _paladin,”_ Haxus snapped, lurching away from the dashboard and making a remarkable effort without falling to the ground. He stopped just shy of Lance’s paladin boots and nudged them with his own, giving the hazy boy on the ground a look of near-pity. Then he leaned down and slapped Lance - hard - across his cheek. Lance bit his lip to keep from yelling out, but he kept his eyes closed, too.

And earned himself another slap across the face.

“Stubborn and stupid even in the face of failure. Pathetic.”

“G’fuck yourself,” Lance managed to spit back.

This time the Galra grabbed at Lance’s face, curling purple fingers around his cheeks and squeezing until nails like tailons dug into his skin. It freaking hurt. Lance finally cracked open his eyes, hissing in pain as his head was forcibly jerked back around to look out the window.

It was a bloody massacre. Lance could do nothing.

Then Haxus let go and lurched back away, back to the control panel. The dying man made no effort to hide his heavy breaths.

Lance shook his head and tore his gaze away a second time, choking back a sob.

Victory or death, and it appeared Haxus would be getting both. Lance was still the loser. Nothing even mattered anymore.

Lance slumped back in his place on the floor, his chin falling to his chest as his eyes fluttered shut again. He was tired, and the adrenaline rush had waned, leaving nothing but fatigue in its wake. His desperation to do more wasn’t enough to make up for the energy he’d already lost. Haxus had him. Even if Haxus died in the next two minutes, he still had Lance, so nothing really mattered, right? He still had Tajny under his thumb. He still had Lance. He still had… He still had Keith...

Wait, _Keith._

Where was Keith?

The thought of Keith unconscious or even dead in another part of the jet yanked him out of his daze.

He looked around wildly, eyes searching, frantic. He needed to find Keith. Needed this one thing, so badly it hurt. How could he just let himself lose when it was possible that Keith was still alive and _close?_

Frantic eyes stopped, locking onto a figure shoved into a corner that Lance had almost overlooked.

 _There_.

Still unconscious with his wrists tied behind his back. Keith sat slumped in a far corner of the cockpit, and Lance had almost _missed_ him. In his defense, everything was dark and Keith blended in well with his background. But still, how had Lance missed him?

“Keith,” he whispered, not really to anyone. Just to double check that he wasn’t like, hallucinating from shock or something.

It was just then that Lance realized that Haxus hadn’t even bothered to tie his wrists. Lance was free to do whatever he pleased - Haxus just assumed he’d be too weak.

...Wait, he really hadn't tied him up?

_Him?_

What a fucking idiot.

Hope was not entirely lost after all. There was something still worth fighting for, and if Lance could just get his head in the game and  _fight,_ perhaps he'd actually have a chance.

Even now, as the rest of his senses started to return as his body finally woke up from his strangling-induced unconsciousness, Lance remembered who the heck he was and what he was doing here in the first place.

He was the sniper of Voltron, stealth specialist and lauded paladin. He had friends to protect. He had a _team._

And Keith was here. Keith was important now. He’d already proven himself tenfold, so what was Lance even waiting for, anyway?

It was a sobering moment, one that he wouldn’t let slip away so easily. With that in mind, he pushed himself to his feet with a strength he didn’t even know he had, feeling like a different man. One foot in front of the other, he thought, before he was rushing straight for Haxus and the control board.

The other man’s reflexes had slowed with the wounds. Even as he turned to defend himself Lance had the element of surprise.

But it would only work for so long.

“What in the blaz--”

_Crrrackkk!!_

Ducking the slow punch from the Galra, Lance landed a well-placed elbow to the face and immediately knew he’d done something right. Dang, that _sounded_ like it hurt. It’d hurt his elbow, too.

For a few seconds, it was a blur.

A frazzled Haxus tried to raise his wrist and call for backup through the comms but Lance batted the hand away, throwing out his foot to catch the man in his armor-clad stomach. It landed dully, but there was still some force behind it. If not to injure, Lance had still done enough to bring the Galra down to the floor, where Haxus hissed and tore at Lance’s CosMesh-covered calves frantically. All the rage and bitterness Lance held for the Galra, for this one in particular, broke out of him like an animal tearing out of a cage. It was an impressive fight. Surprisingly, evenly matched. He kicked out again, and again. The clawing was relentless. Even with Haxus injured on the floor he still put up a damn good fight. But Lance was holding ground.

Until he let his focus drop to Keith for one second, upon hearing a groan of pain from back in the corner. He didn't sound good at all. Had Haxus done something else to him?

The brief lapse in focus was all Haxus needed. He took the chance and grabbed Lance's ankle, dragging him down. Lance cried out and scrambled for something to grab onto but there was nothing within reach.

On the floor, the two pushed and shoved - Lance could swear he actually _bit_ the guy at some point, hard enough to draw blue blood - before a purple hand finally shot out and managed to grasp Lance by the hair. He shrieked and punched out twice, blindly, but missed both times.

The cool edge of metal pressed to his throat.

Lance stilled.

A rush of air filled the terrible silence that suddenly fell over the cockpit.

Haxus grinned. It was the grin of a dying man who knew he’d won despite the consequences.

Lance lay tense and still on his back, both hands gripping the hand that held a knife to his throat, but he knew it was a lost cause. He wasn't strong enough. Haxus's other arm had Lance pinned, forearm slowly pressing the air out of Lance's lungs as he fought to breathe. He could already begin to see white spots dancing in front of his eyes.

“Now see here you piece of _filth,”_ Haxus spat, heaving with the effort to breathe. The blade pressed in a little harder. Lance felt a thin trail of warmth trickle down his neck. _“_ you will never, not in all the short years you spend in this universe, be a match for the _Galra_ . _No_ one is a match for the Galra, you pathetic--”

Lance yelled, but it wasn’t because of Haxus’s nails digging into his scalp -

\- It was Keith.

Keith’s blessed face. His blessed yellow eyes and incredible, heart-stopping, angry-as-hell expression came into focus just behind Haxus, along with the sharp glint of metal, before Lance’s livid attacker was yanked bodily from him and…

Lance winced, looking away and the fingers in his hair finally let go.

The sound of a knife being drawn through flesh and then clattering metallically to the floor rang out in the following, searing silence.

“Not even another Galra?” Keith huffed, sounding more peeved than terrified, before he locked eyes with Lance, whose eyes were huge and caught somewhere between struck-dumb and relieved beyond belief.

“Keith holy _shit--_ I mean--” Lance tripped over his words just like he tripped over himself getting to his feet, taking a shaking step away from the body on the floor.

“Well don’t look so damn happy to see me,” Keith muttered as he managed a crooked grin despite the blood speckled on his cheek. "And um, _ow."_ He coughed once, before he met Lance’s eyes again.

And collapsed.

 

*****

**()0()**

*****

 

Lance caught him, thank god. He would've felt pretty dumb letting Keith faceplant onto the floor of the jet.

 

A snide comment about swooning damsels in distress and helpless princesses flickered vaguely through his head, but he shook the thoughts away.... although maybe he'd save it for later. Assuming they both got out of here alive.

“Dammit Keith," he murmured to himself, shifting to hold Keith a little more steadily in his arms as he knelt on the floor, where a stream of blue blood was already beginning to pool around the body of the other Galra. The one who'd almost killed Lance. Dead.

"Keith, you are literally the coolest and dumbest Galra I know, and you're not even awake to hear me say that," Lance muttered, laughing bitterly.

Just his luck that the Keith in question was too unconscious to answer.

It soon became clear that this jet was functioning on auto-pilot, but something on the dashboard blinked, catching Lance’s eye. Bad wind. If they didn’t fix their streamline or get off of this jet soon…

Well, he really didn’t wanna know what it felt like to be a purple desert pancake.

Only one thing to do.

Back in emergency mode, Lance carefully half-carried, half-dragged Keith back to his corner, making sure he was somewhat secure, before he made a mad dash for the jet’s control panel. He grimaced when he had to very quickly and haphazardly kick Haxus’s body out of the way.

All righty. Fingers crossed he still remembered all that garrison training.

The controls looked different from his own cruiser’s, filled with buttons and covered with symbols he'd never really learned to read. But now wasn’t really the time to be a novice pilot. Okay… that button looked right.

The entire jet rolled into a horrible angle about thirty degrees away from where Lance wanted it.

Fuck it, manual it is.

He shot out a hand for what he really hoped were the joysticks, grasped each one with a hand, and pulled. Muscles he forgot he had flexed under the strain. Even the muscles in his butt were making an effort to help keep steady.

“FuckingSHITbuddygod _damn_ ,” Lance hissed, feeling a bead of sweat run down the side of his temple. “Nuh- _nope,”_ he could feel the blisters in his hands open back up as the jet shuddered and made a pitiful effort to maintain a healthy angle that wouldn’t get its passengers killed.Through the purple cloud of dust in the air, he could still make out the half-destroyed camp. They’d gotten higher since the last time he’d looked out the window, now about a mile above the chaos and the carnage.

He could just make out a shape in the dust, big and getting bigger. Lance tried to swallow down some of the fear. He was about to go _tête-à-tête_ with another Galra, and he had no idea how to steer his own freaking jet let alone fire a blaster from the stupid thing.

Stay calm, he told himself. _Stay fucking calm._

The aircraft grew larger. Lance could make out some of the details now. Despite the new surge of adrenaline and sweat racing through him (and through his shirt) he still had his wits about him enough to recognize how oddly familiar the jet was.

And also the fact that it wasn’t a jet. Nor was it Galra.

The aircraft was white. A cruiser, just like Lance’s, only a little bigger.

That wasn’t just any cruiser.

Lance’s heart soared. He almost _whooped_ for joy but stopped himself, hazarding a glance to his right. War still raged down below. It didn’t even look like a battle, but ahead of him was hope. Something far, far brighter in comparison. He could cry. He could pass out.

God, he would kill for a nap right now.

Lance could not have been happier to see Allura than he was right now--and he knew that all hope wasn’t lost after all. Shit was bad, yeah, but man did he have backup now.

They could get out.

They _would_ get out. If Lance could just _get_ them both out.

Keith was mumbling something, but still very much out of it and certainly not helpful in the slightest. Maybe he was going crazy, or maybe Lance was just trying to make light of the situation by thinking up all the things he could say as soon as Keith woke up.

_Mooooorning sleeping beauty!_

_Whattup bro, have a nice coma?_

_Well hel-LO princess, up bright and early I see._

Keith would hate all of them. Also he’d probably punch Lance in the throat for the last one.

Lance hoped they’d get out of here safely just so he could find out - as messed up as that was. Wow. Maybe he was going crazy after all.

Lance lowered himself to reach an arm under Keith’s armpit, tugging him as gently as he could while still being quick about it.

Abandoning the joysticks was a gamble, but there was no other way if he wanted to get to the white cruiser before this thing went _kaboom._

His wrist cuff crackled.

_“-ance - I - you need to jump - Lance do you read --”_

He slammed the comms button of his wrist cuff so hard he nearly broke his middle finger. That could’ve been bad. He liked that finger.

“Allura? Copy that copy that! Allura, I’m here! Keith is-- the prince is here! He’s not an enemy we gotta let him on board.” The comms fuzzed a little. He waited a painful second, heart racing just like the jet was racing through wind that had turned from a dust storm into a battering ram of purple _evil._ “Allura how do I get to you?” he all but shouted into his comms, before bending his knees to catch himself when the jet shook dangerously. 

“ _Will fly below, you - - to jump. Need to jump soon. Look - - window!_ ”

Lance did as he (assumedly) was instructed, and there was the cruiser, sailing down until it was lower than the jet. Was it going _below_ them?

Lance stumbled as another forceful gust of wind shoved the jet. He made it to the window, managing not to land on his face. Yup, there was the white cruiser, gliding along neatly below the soon-to-be-rubble Galra jet. And there was the airstair, extended out for him like this was a special occasion.

But hey, weren’t near-death experiences always special occasions? Right. Next step: Open the hatch. This was gonna suck.

In midair going how many miles per hour in the middle of a growing dust storm, Lance wasn’t sure if this was exactly safe-

He searched around wildly for something that looked like it would open the hatch.

He spotted a big blue button next to the dashboard, square and about the size of his hand.

What did he have to lose?

Lance _smacked_ that button like it was Keith's-

Actually, nevermind.

The button blinked bright blue, the sound of emergency alarms whirring in his ears as the floor hissed and creaked just a few inches shy of his feet, and he backed the hell up real quick as he covered his ears. _Found the hatch,_ he thought, half proud and half scared out of his wits. Lance was not a fan of the idea of jumping from a moving jet onto the airstair of an equally fast cruiser. No sir, not safe at all.

But neither was being blown up on a crashing Galra jet.

Allura was there at the airstair, white hair pulled free of the normally tidy ponytail as purple wind clawed at it like an unseen animal.

“ _Lance!”_ she called up through cupped hands. Lance steadied himself on his feet and managed to give a wave down.

“Glad you could make it!” he called back. He meant it.

“Lance, you need to jump!”

Maybe if he pretended this wasn’t real, his legs would stop shaking so much. Just one jump, and then he’d be safe. Maybe he’d roll his ankle, but still. Safe.

He and Keith would be lucky to see another day--

He remembered.

“Wait, Keith is in here!” he shouted, eyes wide and worried all over again. He looked over his shoulder, finding Keith quickly before he whirled back around. “Allura, we can’t leave him here!”

“Lance you _must_ jump _now_!” Allura yelled from meters below, waving Lance to hurry.

“I’ll get him!” someone else yelled from down below, but Lance could hardly see through the purple-tinted wind. Shielding his eyes, he took a step towards the jet’s hatch. Something flew up towards him and he shouted, but a hand on his shoulder a moment later made him stop.

Eyes stinging, Lance watched in a blur as someone rushed past him and into the cockpit. _They were getting Keith. Keith was gonna be okay._

He looked down again. God, they were high up.

He felt like he was gonna be sick.

_Keep going, almost there. This is not the time to lose your shit, Lance._

He felt a weight lift when he realized that both he and Keith were gonna be safely off the jet in one piece.

With that thought to bolster his confidence, he let loose a _whoop!_ And made a flying leap through the hatch, down, down through the wind that screamed in his ears like wailing children, before he landed hard onto the extended airstair. He tucked and rolled on instinct as he hit the top stair, thudding into the cockpit belly up like a beached, dust-coated whale. He heaved in a grateful breath, thanking god for the mercifully dust-free air.

Bright blue eyes stared back down at him from above.

Lance couldn’t help but grin.

“Hey there princess,” he said, accepting the awaiting hand of Allura. She snorted.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she replied evenly before helping Lance to his feet. Lance blinked some of the dust in his eyes, wiping away purple tears. A fleeting glance at Allura was enough for him to catch the lavender tint of her hair, tangled white locks dyed by the dusty wind. Somehow, she pulled it off. Lance hated how Allura could just, like, _do_ that.

Over Allura’s shoulder he caught sight of a sizeable crew of people.

Lance recognized a few of them: Marline was there, and so was Lisitsa. Kullak, too, with her broad arms toting her trusty, ginormous blaster. She gave him a small salute with two fingers, before scowling.

Someone else landed on the airstair, making Lance turn.

The other person who had boarded, blurry in the wind at first, had been unrecognizable back on the jet. But now Lance could finally see who is was without all the dust in his eyes.

...Tee? The young Tajnyan who’d wanted nothing to do with Lance, who recognized him immediately. And in Tee's arms was-

“Keith,” Lance sighed with relief, then caught sight of the look on Allura’s face. He swallowed. Better save that part of the story for another time. Preferably at a time when they weren’t all about to collide with a pilot-less jet on its way to becoming, uh, one with the desert.

The jet was seconds away from joining the rubble down below

As soon as the airstair was closed and the airlock secured, the cruiser jolted - And not a moment too soon.

Lance watched through one of the windows but had to turned away just a tick before the jet hit the ground. He could still hear it, though.

As the cruiser shot up into the air, the jet went down, down, down…

 

 _PshoOOOMMCrrrRRRU_ **_NCHHHH!!!!_ **

 

Lance didn’t think he’d ever heard a sound quite like _that_ one before. Turning away from the window, he was met with at least twenty pairs of eyes, including Allura’s.

Before he could get a word out, Allura raised a hand. “Now is not the time for blame,” she said. She was so _calm._ It terrified Lance, how she could remain so calm even in the midst of all hell breaking loose. “We’re getting these people off of this planet. This isn’t over, but if we leave now instead of fighting we can at the very least postpone an ever bigger battle.”

Lance winced, but he had no choice but to agree. What was the point in arguing with Allura? It wasn’t like she didn't have a good point.

The cruiser gave a jolt as the particle barrier warded off a blast from an oncoming jet. Allura cringed and whipped her head around to snap orders at a Tajnyan woman at the control panel. It appeared that Nixys was piloting for now. Dang, was there anything she didn't do?

Lance had never liked war. But as he watched the planet of Tajny get blown to bits, there was nothing he desired more than an end to all the pain, the death and the suffering. Right now, the only thought that burned in Lance’s brain was the ache for an endless war to finally have an end.

A hand pressed over his shoulder and he looked up.

Allura, glassy-eyed, gave him a crooked, bittersweet smile. It wasn’t happy. But there was relief.

“You’re safe,” she said. “Welcome back.”

Lance couldn’t respond. He’d failed.

But then he looked up and caught sight of the cluster of scared - or in some cases determined - fugitives.

“What about the others?” Marline said, breaking the unsteady silence. “There must be survivors. We have to go back for them.”

Lance hadn’t thought about that. If there were any survivors to speak of down on the ground, then that was right where Lance was gonna go.

From behind, he heard Keith groan. He'd be waking up soon.

They would have to be quick about this then.

He could still do something. It was a fucking disaster, but there was still _something_. His gaze sprung to Allura, who did a double take when she saw the expression he was wearing.

“Lance-?”

“Get me to my cruiser,” Lance grit out, trying to look like he hadn’t just been strangled half to death and forced to look at a massacre of hundreds. “We’ve still got work to do.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is an action-packed chapter but I AM planning to give these guys a much-needed break soon.
> 
> And what's life without a little music?
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhXU8c8qwXs - Hey Jude  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PrUU2S_iw - Ohio
> 
> Also, this year was, uh, really crazy. I've been wanting to update for literally a year but life just keeps happening. Did I mention I'm working full time over the summer (and a second part-time job?) What I'm trying to say is, I'm really sorry for the crazy long wait, and if I can manage another chapter or two before the summer's out, I'm all over it. Hang tight you guys, sending love!! <3


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